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IT 


DR.  NEWMAN. 
{From  a  lithograph  published  some  time  b^ore  the  year  1850.) 


-CARDINAL  NEWMAN- 


BY 


RICHARD    H.  HUTTON 


SECOND  EDITION 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

1891 


IN  '^  ti  E' 


^^/Z3 


PREFACE. 

The  whole  of  this  little  essay  was  written  and  in  type, 

and  most  of  it  corrected  for  the  press,  before  Cardinal 

Newman's  death.     I  thought  it  better,  considering  the 

smallness  of  the  space  available  for  the  treatment  of  so 

great  a  subject,  to  devote  the  main  part  of  the  book 

to  the  study  of  Dr.  Newman's  life  before  leaving  the 

Anglican   Church, — in   other  words,  to   the   course   of 

thought  which  led  him  to  the  Church  of  Kome, — and  to 

compress  the  latter  part  of  his  career  into  a  single  long 

chapter.     This  seemed  to  me  the  best  way  of  making 

the  book  of  interest  to  the  great  majority  of  English 

readers. 

R.  H.  H. 


CONTENTS. 


OTAP,  PAOE 

I.     Newman's  genuineness  and  greatness          ...  1 

II.   HIS  EARLY  LIFE  AT  HOME  AND  AT  OXFORD — HIS 

DOGMATIC  CREED — HIS  BOOK  ON  THE  ARIANS  16 

III.  HURRELL  FROUDE  ANI»  THE  MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE  34 

IV.  Newman's  relation  to   the  tractarian  move- 

ment ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  46 

v.     Newman's  alleged  scepticism 59 

VI.       balancing — DEFINING    THE    VIA  MEDIA                   ...  71 

Vn.       THE    PREACHER   AT    ST.    MARY'S 97 

VIII.       ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS — TRACT  90   AND   THE 

JERUSALEM   BISHOPRIC                ...             ...             ...  138 

IX.      THE  THEORY  OF  THE  "  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN 

doctrine"      ...           ...           ...           ...           ...  162 

X.       NEWMAN   AS    ROMAN    CATHOLIC       ...             ...             ...  190 

XI.     Newman's  chief  poem  and  the  unity  op  his 

LIFE   ...         ...          ...  244 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN 


CHAPTER   I. 

HIS   GENUINENESS  AND   GREATNESS. 

It  is  a  strange  and  not  a  discreditable  characteristic 
of  the  days  in  which  we  live,  that,  in  spite  of  the  ardour 
with  which  the  English  people  have  devoted  themselves 
to  material  progress  and  the  scientific  studies  which 
have  ministered  to  material  progress,  one  man  at  least 
has  been  held  to  be  truly  great  by  the  nation,  who  has 
crossed  all  its  prejudices  and  calmly  ignored  all  its 
prepossessions;  who  has  lived  more  than  half  his  life 
in  what  Protestants  at  least  would  call  a  monastery, — 
for  his  home  at  Littlemore  as  well  as  at  Edgbaston 
was  more  than  half  monastic, — who  has  loved  penance, 
who  has  ahvays  held  up  the  ascetic  life  to  admiration,  t^ 
who  has  haunted  our  imaginations  with  his  mild  and 
gentle  yet  austere  figure,  with  his  strong  preference 
even  for  superstition  as  compared  with  shallow,  optimistic 
sentiment;  and  has  impressed  upon  us  even  more  by 
his  practice  than  by  his  teaching,  that  "  the  lust  of  the 
flesh,  and  the  lust  of  the  eyes,  and  the  pride  of  life,  are 

B 


f^  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

not  of  the  Father  but  of  the  world."     Cardinal  Newman 
has  not  been  the  more  popular  for  being  a  Cardinal, 
but    the   Church   of    Rome    has   certainly   been    less 
unpopular  in  England  since  a  man  of  such  plain  and  I 
simple  life  as  he,  was  ranked  among  the  princes  of  the' 
Roman  Catholic  Church. 

I  suppose  that  one  may  safely  regard  it  as  a  standard 
of  true  greatness  to  surpass  other  men  of  the  same 
calibre  of  culture  and  character,  men  with  whom  com- 
parison is  reasonable,  in  the  ardour  and  success  with 
which  any  purpose  worthy  of  the  highest  endeavour  is 
prosecuted.  Measuring  by  this  standard,  it  would  be 
hard  to  fix  on  any  man  now  living  in  England  who 
.  could  rival  Cardinal  Newman  in  the  singleness,  the 
devotion,  the  steadfastness,  and  the  nobility  of  his  main 
effort  in  life.  I  say  this,  though  I  cannot  adopt  for  my- 
self his  later  conception  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  hardly 
even  that  earlier  conception  which  led  so  inevitably  to 
the  later.  But  that  is  nothing  to  the  purpose.  What 
is  perfectly  clear  to  any  one  who  can  appreciate  Cardinal 
Newman  at  all,  is  that  from  the  beginning  to  the  end 
of  his  career  he  has  been  jDenetrated  by  a  fervent  love 
of  God,  a  fervent  gratitude  for  the  Christian  revelation, 
and  a  steadfast  resolve  to  devote  the  whole  force  of  a 
singularly  powerful  and  even  intense  character  to  the 
endeavour  to  promote  the  conversion  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen,  from  their  tepid  and  unreal  profession  of 
Christianity  to  a  new  and  profound  faith  in  it, — which 
new  and  profound  faith  in  it  could,  in  his  belief,  be 
gained  only  by  the  reorganization  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  its  re-enthronement  in  a  position  of  authority 
even  greater  than  that  which  it  held  in  the  middle 
ages.    I  know  that  this  conception  of  Cardinal  Newman 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND  GUEATNESS.  3 

as  having  devoted  a  singularly  large  and  apprehensive 
intellect  to  the  pure  purpose  of  re- Christianizing  a  half- 
Christian,  or  less  than  half-Christian,  people,  is  not 
frankly  accepted  by  some  of  his  keenest  critics.  Pro- 
fessor Huxley,  for  instance,  has  said  quite  lately,^  "  If 
I  were  called  upon  to  compile  a  Primer  of  Infidelity, 
I  think  I  should  save  myself  trouble  by  making  a  selec- 
tion from  these  works"  (namely,  Cardinal  Newman's 
Tract  85  in  the  Tracts  for  the,  Times,  and  the 
Essay  on  the  Miracles  recorded  in  the  Ecclesiastical 
History  of  the  Early  Ages),  "  and  from  the  Essay  on 
Development,  by  the  same  author."  I  do  not  suppose 
that  Professor  Huxley  meant  to  suggest  that  these 
essays  of  Dr.  Newman  were  written  with  the  intention 
of  undermining  belief,  though  he  thinks  them  so  admir- 
ably adapted  for  that  purpose.  But  unquestionably 
there  is  a  very  wdde-spread  suspicion,  which  I  suppose 
Professor  Huxley  shares,  that  Cardinal  Newman  has 
all  through  his  life  been  on  the  very  brink  of  infidelity, 
and  only  saved  from  it  by  the  deliberate  exercise  of  a 
strong  and  sturdy  loill  to  believe.  For  my  part,  I 
utterly  reject  this  view,  and  do  not  think  that  it  can 
for  a  moment  be  held  by  any  one  who  carefully 
studies  and  appreciates  his  career, — which  very  few  of 
his  critics  do.  Professor  Huxley  least  of  all,  as  he  shows 
by  his  astound ingly  unintelligent  criticism  of  a  very  sig- 
nificant and  very  just  passage  from  the  Essay  on  Miracles, 
which  almost  immediately  follows  this  observation  on  the 
sceptical  tendency  of  Dr.  Newman's  writings.  To  my 
apprehension,  the  true  theory  of  Dr.  Newman's  attitude 
of  mind  through  a  long  life  is  the  passage  in  his  Aiwlogia 

1  In  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  June,  1889  ;  note  on  p.  948. 


4  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

pro  vita  sua  (so  often  quoted  unintelligently  by  Roman 
Catholics  who  have  never  really  discriminated  between 
difficulties  and  doubts),  in  which  Newman  said,  that 
"ten  thousand' difficulties  do  not  make  one  doubt,  as  I 
understand  the  subject ;  difficulty  and  doubt  are  incom- 
mensurate ;  "  ^  and  which  he  illustrated  by  adding,  '*  Of 
all  points  of  faith,  the  being  of  a  God  is  to  my  own 
apprehension  encompassed  with  most  difficulty,  and 
borne  in  on  our  minds  with  most  power."  It  might  as 
well  be  said,  that  because  a  man  sees  with  the  most 
vivid  and  minute  apprehension  the  difficulty  of  answer- 
ing the  necessitarian  arguments  against  responsibility 
and  free  will,  or  the  difficulty  of  proving  the  existence 
of  any  external  world,  he  doubts  the  existence  of  his 
own  responsibility  and  free  will, — though  nothing  else 
in  the  world  is  so  certain  to  him,  not  even  the  exist- 
ence of  the  external  world  itself, — as  that  Cardinal 
Newman's  subtle  and  individual  appreciation  of  the 
various  strong  points  of  the  sceptic's  position,  implies 
any  inclination  to  doubt  the  truth,  and  not  only  the 
truth,  but  the  certainty  of  the  Christian  revelation. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  greater  part  of  Cardinal 
Newman's  life  has  been  given  to  the  discussion  of  the 
question  how  such  difficulties  as  beset  the  revealed 
Christian  theology  ought  to  be  met.  He  himself  has 
told  us  that  he  began  the  study  of  this  class  of  difficul- 
ties quite  in  his  boyhood  by  reading  Paine  and  David 
Hume,  and  it  is  evident  that  no  one  ever  entered  into 
these  difficulties  with  more  genuine  insight — into  what 
they  really  prove  and  what  they  are  really  worth.  It 
is  just  the  same  with  a  much  more  imposing  class  of 

^  Apologia,  p.  374. 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND  GREATNESS.  5 

difficulties,  the  difficulties  caused  by  the  spectacle  of 
the  world's  worldiiness,  misery,  and  sin.  In  the  cele- 
brated passage  in  the  Apologia  svhich  has  been  so  often 
quoted,  the  passage  in  which  Dr.  Newman  contrasts 
the  moral  scenery  of  the  actual  world  with  that  which 
he  should  have  expected  from  his  knowledge  of  the 
Creator,  whose  holiness  is  to  him  the  deepest  of  all 
certainties — a  certainty  on  a  level  with  the  certainty 
of  his  own  existence-^he  shows  the  same  profound 
apprehension  of  the  obstacles  with  which  the  Christian 
theology  has  to  grapple,  and  the  same  absolute  con-  ■ 
fidence  that,  however  incompetent  it  is  to  solve  these 
difficulties,  it  can  and  will  triumphantly  surmount  I 
them.  This  is  what  makes  Cardinal  Newman  a  really  j 
great  man.)  His  whole  life  has  been  lived  in  the  pas- 
sionate confidence  that  these  great,  these  apparently 
appalling  difficulties,  are  not  only  not  really  insuperable, 
but  are  infinitely  less  than  those  which  any  man  would 
encounter  who,  dealing  honestly  with  his  own  conscience, 
should  yet  give  up  as  false  the  belief  in  the  Divine 
origin  of  the  world  and  the  Divine  character  of  Chris- 
tianity. He  has  treated  the  difficulties  of  faith  in  his 
own  way,  and  I  cannot  but  think,  in  relation  to  that 
considerable  class  of  them  for  the  treatment  of  which 
he  relies  absolutely  on  the  authority  of  the  Church,  in 
a  very  unsatisfactory  way ;  but  he  has  never  in  the  least 
ignored  them,  and  he  has  devoted  extraordinary  learn-  ] 
ing,  genius,  and  ardour  of  nature,  through  a  long  life, 
with  the  most  perfect  singleness  of  purpose,  to  the  / 
battle  with  them.  If  any  man  ever  succeeded  in  any- 
thing, Cardinal  Newman  has  succeeded  in  convincing 
all  those  who  study  his  career  with  an  approach  to 
candour  and  discrimination,  that  the  depth  and  luminous^ 


6  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

ness  of  his  conviction  that  the  true  key  to  the  enigma 
of  life  is  God's  revelation  of  Himself  in  Christ  and  in 
His  Church,  are  infinitely  deeper  in  him,  and  more 
of  the  intimate  essence  of  his  mind  and  heart,  than  his 
appreciation,  keen  as  it  is,  of  the  obstacles  which  stand 
in  the  way  of  those  convictions  and  appear  to  bar  the 
access  to  them. 

Now  if  the  greatness  of  a  man  depends,  as  I  have 
said,  chiefly  on  the  ardour  and  energy  which  he  devotes 
to  adequate  objects,  Cardinal  Newman's  life  has  cer- 
tainly been  a  very  great  one.  There  are  two  lines  of 
Wordsworth's — whose  poetry,  strange  to  say,  never 
"found"  Dr.  Newman,  though  there  is  so  much  in  his 
writings  that  seems  like  a  paraphrase  of  some  of  Words- 
worth's finest  poetry — which  delineate  exactly  the  labour 
and  strenuousness  of  the  thinking  aspects  of  his  life — 

"  The  intellectual  power  through  words  and  things 
Went  sounding  on  a  dim  and  perilous  way." 

This  does  not  express  that  vividness  of  his  faith  in 
Divine  guidance,  that  exultation  in  the  wisdom  and 
spiritual  instinct  of  his  Church,  which  has  furnished 
him  wdth  his  confidence,  and  guaranteed  his  success, 
but  does  exactly  express  the  procedure  of  his  intellect, 
as  he  has  taken  exact  measure  of  the  depths  of  the 
various  channels  by  which  he  might  safely  travel  to 
"  the  haven  where  he  would  be,"  the  care  with  which  he 
has  buoyed  the  quicksands  and  the  sunken  rocks,  and 
the  anxious  vigilance  with  which  he  has  traced  out  the 
winding  and  often  perilous  passages  in  the  way.  But 
how  this  aspect  of  his  mind,  how  the  results  of  his 
arduous,  intellectual  explorations  which  he  has  so  fully 
and   frankly  given  to  the  world,  can   have  concealed 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND  GREATNESS.  7 

from  any  man  of  large  insight,  the  profound  and 
passionate  conviction  which  lay  beneath  all  this  delicate 
intellectual  appreciation  of  difficulties,  I  cannot  for  a 
moment  understand.  The  very  terms  in  which  Dr. 
Newman  states  his  apprehension  of  the  difficulties  imply 
the  most  unhesitating  confidence  that  these  difficulties 
will  vanish  utterly  away  when  viewed  in  the  full  light 
of  the  Christian  revelation.  Take  the  very  first  sermon 
of  which  there  is  any  record  amongst  Dr.  Newman's  ^ 
printed  writings,  one  preached  in  Oxford  in  January, 
1825,  and  entitled  Temporal  Advantages,  when  he  can 
only  have  been  twenty-four  years  of  age,  from  the 
text,  "We  brought  nothing  into  this  world,  and  it  is 
certain  we  can  carry  nothing  out ;  and  having  food 
and  raiment,  let  us  be  therewith  content,"  and  consider 
if  it  be  possible  that  that  sermon  could  have  been  written 
by  a  man  who  did  not  feel  to  the  full  depth  of  his  heart 
and  soul  the  reality  and  power  of  the  Christian  faith : 
"  What  can  increase  their  peace  who  believe  and  trust 
in  the  Son  of  God  ?  Shall  we  add  a  drop  to  the  ocean, 
or  grains  to  the  sand  of  the  sea  ?  .  .  .  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  a  leveller  of  ranks ;  we  pay 
indeed  our  superiors  full  reverence,  and  with  cheerful- 
ness, as  unto  the  Lord  ;  and  we  honour  eminent  talents 
as  deserving  admiration  and  reward  ;  and  the  more 
readily  act  ive  times  because  these  are  little  things  to  -pay^  ^ 
Here  the  utterly  unworldly  nature  of  the  man,  the  vivid 
spiritual  feeling  that  the  inward  life  in  God  is  every- 
thing of  the  smallest  consequence  to  the  soul,  spoke 
out  plainly,  and  at  a  time  when  Dr.  Newman  had  not 
reached  anything  like  the  full  maturity  of  his  power. 

*  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  vii.  p.  73. 


8  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

From  that  date  onwards  the  vividness  of  his  spiritual 
insight  grew  steadily,  till  it  reached  its  highest  point, 
and  was  recognized  generally  by  the  world  when  he 
wrote  his  religious  autobiography  in  1864.  Writing  of 
his  own  boyhood,  when  he  was  only  just  a  man,  he  said 
of  himself,  "  I  used  to  wish  that  the  Arabian  tales  were 
true ;  my  imagination  ran  on  unknown  influences,  on 
magical  powers  and  talismans  ;  I  thought  life  might  be 
a  dream  and  I  an  angel,  and  all  this  world  a  deception, 
my  fellow  -  angels  hiding  themselves  from  me,  and 
deceiving  me  with  the  semblance  of  a  material  world." 
And  in  the  sermon  on  "  The  mind  of  little  children  "  ^ 
he  speaks  professedly  from  his  own  experience  when  he 
says,  "  This  we  know  full  well — we  know  it  from  our 
own  recollections  of  ourselves  and  our  experience  of 
children — that  there  is  in  the  infant  soul,  in  the  fresh 
years  of  its  regenerate  state,  a  discernment  of  the 
unseen  world  in  the  things  that  are  seen,  a  realization 
of  what  is  sovereign  and  adorable,  and  an  incredulity 
and  ignorance  about  what  is  transient  and  changeable, 
which  mark  it  as  the  first  outline  of  the  matured 
Christian,  when  weaned  from  things  temporal,  and 
living  in  the  intimate  conviction  of  the  Divine  presence." 
I  quote  these  passages  only  to  show  how  completely 
the  spiritual  reality  of  the  Oxford  preacher  had  its 
roots  in  his  own  past,  how  certain  it  is  that  Newman 
was  speaking  from  the  depths  of  his  own  experience 
when  he  said,  that  from  a  very  early  age  he  had  rested 
"  in  the  thought  of  two,  and  two  only,  supreme  and 
luminously  self-evident  beings,  myself  and  my  Creator." 
It  is  simply  ridiculous  for  any  one  who  knows  intimately 

*  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  ii.,  Sermon  vi. 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND  GREATNESS.  9 

the  whole  series  of  his  writings  to  suppose  for  a  moment 
that  Newman's  nature  is  sceptical,  and  his  mind  kept 
only  by  force  of  will  from  toppling  over  into  unbelief. 
On  the  contrary,  his  nature  is  profoundly  and  entirely 
penetrated  by  the  Christian  idealism.  And  had  it  been 
otherwise,  I  believe  that  he  would  have  been  much 
more  likely  to  ignore  the  sceptical  aspects  of  the  religious 
problems  of  the  day  altogether,  instead  of  giving  them  so 
profound  a  study.  It  was  his  absolute  confidence  that 
nothing  could  shake  his  faith  in  the  truth  of  revelation 
that  induced  him  to  master  so  completely  as  he  did 
the  various  aspects  of  the  objections  which  led  so  many 
men  to  withhold  their  faith  from  Christianity.  This 
then  I  regard  as  one  certain  test  of  Cardinal  Newman's 
greatness,  that  throughout  a  long  life  he  has  followed 
with  singular  tenacity  and  concentration  of  purpose 
one  grand  aim — that  of  winning  his  fellow-country- 
men from  their  tepid  and  formal  Christianity  to  a 
Christianity  worthy  of  the  name,  in  spite  of  obstacles 
in  the  way  which  he  has  recognized  with  a  candour  and 
a  vivacity  that  have  strangely  misled  some  of  his  critics 
into  imagining  that  he  appreciated  even  more  the 
obstacles  to  belief  than  he  did  the  spiritual  power  by 
which  those  obstacles  were  to  be  surmounted. 

A  second  safe  test  of  greatness  is  to  be  found  in 
the  unhesitating  and  unswerving  consecration  of  great 
genius  or  talent — genius  or  talent  of  a  calibre  sufficient 
to  detach  a  man  from  his  original  pursuit,  and  to  secure 
him  distinguished  success  in  a  different  field  of  effort, 
— to  the  disinterested  purpose  with  which  he  set  out  in 
life.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  clearer  case  of  this 
than  is  presented  by  Cardinal  Newman's  career.  His 
literary  power  has  been  so  great,  and  has  shown  itself 


10  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

in  a  style  of  such  singular  grace  and  charm,  as  well  as 
in  irony  of  such  dehcacy  and  vivacity,  that  the  highest 
literary  eminence  was  easily  within  his  reach,  had  he 
cared  to  win  it,  long  before  his  name  was  actually  known 
to  the  world  at  large ;  and  he  would  have  been  a  great 
power  in  literature  had  he  cared  to  devote  himself  to 
literature  in  the  wider  sense,  before  the  Oxford  movement 
had  begun  to  cause  anxiety  in  the  Established  Church. 
But  power  of  this  kind  is  precisely  what  he  never  coveted, 
or  indeed,  in  his  earlier  years,  was  so  much  as  conscious 
of  his  ability  to  attain.  It  must  have  been  some  time 
before  it  dawned  upon  him  that  he  had  any  such  power 
at  all.  Perhaps  when  in  the  early  part  of  1833  Hurrell 
Froude,  with  Newman's  consent,  chose  a  motto  for  the 
Lyrct  Apostolica  from  the  words  of  Achilles  when  return- 
ing to  the  battle,  of  which  the  drift  was,  "  You  shall  know 
the  difference  now  that  I  am  back  again,"  he  had  some 
inkling  of  his  literary  genius,  as  well  as  of  his  force  of 
character.  But  I  think  that  the  motto  in  question  had 
much  more  reference  then  to  his  zeal  than  to  his  literary 
genius ;  and  assuredly  up  to  that  time — when  his  history 
of  the  Arian  heresy  had  not  yet  appeared — he  seems  to 
have  shown  no  sort  of  consciousness  of  literary  power, 
and  to  have  hardly  aimed,  in  his  more  serious  work,  at 
anything  like  literary  form.  The  history  of  the  Arian 
heresy  is  a  very  clear  and  accurate  but  a  very  homely, 
not  to  say  dry,  theological  discussion.  And  for  the 
next  thirteen  years  at  least,  that  is,  from  the  thirty- 
second  to  the  forty-fifth  year  of  his  life,  it  was  only 
in  a  few  short  poems,  and  a  feAV  of  the  later  University 
sermons,  that  he  betrayed  his  strange  mastery  of  literary 
effect. 

All  his  many  publications  during  this  period  of  his  life 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND  GREATNESS.  11 

are  remarkable  for  a  severe  and  business-like  treatment 
of  the  theological  subjects  with  which  he  dealt.  It 
was  not  indeed  till  after  he  became  a  Eoman  Catholic 
that  Dr.  Newman's  literary  genius  showed  itself  ade- 
quately in  his  prose  writings,  and  not  till  twenty  years 
after  he  became  a  Roman  Catholic  that  his  unique  poem 
was  written.  The  verses  in  the  Lyra  Apostolica  are 
almost  the  only  early  evidence  of  his  rare  and  vivid 
imagination.  And  as  to  that  keen  and  searching  irony 
of  which  he  was  afterwards  a  master,  there  was  little 
trace  of  it  till  after  he  had  nearly  completed  his 
fiftieth  year.  Now  it  is  a  striking  test  of  his  true 
greatness,  that  these  great  literary  gifts  should  have 
remained  in  him  all  but  latent  for  so  long  a  period, 
and  yet  not  quite  latent,  for  they  must  have  revealed 
themselves  partially  to  himself  in  the  remarkable  though 
brief  poems  of  which  he  wrote  so  many  during  his 
Mediterranean  tour  in  1833.  What  it  shows  is,  that 
he  really  lost  himself  in  his  work  of  restoring,  as  he 
thought,  the  Church  of  England,  and,  as  it  proved,  of 
convincing  himself  and  a  good  many  of  his  friends  that 
the  only  true  Church  was  the  Church  of  Rome.  But 
what  was  strictly  speaking  missionary  work  absorbed 
him  so  completely  between  1833  and  1845  that  he  seems 
to  have  had  neither  time  nor  care  for  the  development 
of  his  own  literary  powers,  which  he  used  almost  with- 
out noticing  them,  and  never  used  at  all  to  the  full 
till  after  he  had  found  his  goal  in  Rome.  Yet  the  man 
who  had  shown  such  exquisite  and  almost  ^schylean 
genius  as  is  betrayed  in  his  poem  on  The  Elements, 
and  the  weird  analogy  which  he  drew  between  the 
Jewish  people  and  the  Greek  (Edipus  in  the  Lyra 
A^ostolica,  cannot  possibly  have   been   quite   ignorant 


i 


12  CAKDINAL   NEWMAN. 

that  there  was  in  him  a  rich  vein  of  literary  power  if 
he  had  only  chosen  to  turn  aside  from  his  self-appointed 
task  of  restoring  authority  to  the  Anglican  Church,  to 
cultivate  and  exert  it.  I  do  not  know  any  better  test 
of  true  devotion  to  a  mission  than  Dr.  Newman  showed 
in  pouring  out  the  Tracts  for  the  Times,  the  lectures  on 
Justification,  or  the  essays  elaborating  the  Via  Media, 
as  he  called  it,  and  the  various  and  numerous  contribu- 
tions to  Anglican  divinity,  with  unremitting  zeal,  and 
without  apparently  the  slightest  regard  for  popular 
literary  effect, — and  this  too  for  a  long  period  of  years, 
— after  he  had  discerned  in  himself  the  power  to  write 
as  he  wrote  in  such  poems  as  these : — 

THE  ELEMENTS   {A  Tragic  Ghoms), 

Man  is  permitted  miicli 

To  scan  and  learn 

In  Nature's  frame  ; 

Till  he  well-nigli  can  tame 

Brute  mischiefs,  and  can  touch 

Invisible  things,  and  turn 

All  warring  ills  to  purposes  of  good. 

Thus  as  a  God  below,  he  can  control, 

And  harmonize  what  seems  amiss  to  flow 

As  severed  from  the  whole 

And  dimly  understood. 

But  o'er  the  elements 

One  Hand  alone, 

One  Hand  has  sway. 

What  influence  day  by  day 

In  straiter  belt  prevents 

The  impious  Ocean,  thrown 

Alternate  o'er  the  ever-sounding  shore  ? 

Or  who  has  eye  to  trace 

How  the  Plague  came  1 

Forerun  the  doublings  of  the  Tempest^s  race  ? 

Or  the  Air's  weight  and  flame 

On  a  set  scale  explore  1 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND   GREATNESS.  13 

Thus  God  has  willed 

That  man,  when  fully  skilled, 

Still  gropes  in  twilight  dim  ; 

Encompassed  all  his  hours 

By  fearfuUest  powers 

Inflexible  to  him  ; 

That  so  he  may  discern 

His  feebleness, 

And  e'en  for  earth's  success  ^^^ 

To  Him  in  wisdom  turn, 

Who  holds  for  us  the  keys  of  either  home, 

Earth  and  the  world  to  come. 

Yet  I  doubt  if  anything  as  powerful  as  that  could 
have  been  written  under  any  other  than  a  strictly  re- 
ligious inspiration.  At  all  events,  there  is  no  sign  in 
Newman's  career  of  the  general  exercise  of  high  imagin- 
ation for  any  other  than  a  strictly  religious  purpose.  It 
seems  to  have  been  elicited  in  him  by  his  reHgious  aims, 
and  never  to  have  been  elicited  by  any  other  kind  of 
aim.  Would  not  ^schylus  himself,  if  he  had  lived 
again  in  our  generation,  have  been  proud  to  have 
written  the  following  on  the  Jewish  race  ? — 

"  0  piteous  race  1 
Fearful  to  look  upon  ; 
Once  standing  in  high  place. 
Heaven's  eldest  son. 

0  aged  blind, 

Unvenerable  !  as  thou  flittest  by, 

1  liken  thee  to  him  in  pagan  song. 
In  thy  gaunt  majesty, 

The  vagrant  king,  of  haughty-purposed  mind. 
Whom  prayer  nor  plague  could  bend  ; 
Wronged  at  the  cost  of  him  who  did  the  wrong, 
Accursed  himself,  but  in  his  cursing  strong, 
And  honoured  in  his  end." 


There  seems  something  appropriate  in  the  fact,  that 
the  man  who  wrote  these  poems,  and  many  like  them 


14  CAEDINAL  NEWMAN. 

in  his  youth,  should  yet  never  have  sought,  or  apparently 
have  so  much  as  thought  of  seeking,  to  cultivate  his 
literary  faculty  for  its  own  sake  at  all,  but  should  have 
re-discovered  it,  as  it  were,  from  time  to  time,  just  when 
it  was  most  needed  for  the  main  purpose  of  his  life. 
His  power  of  irony  came  out,  for  instance,  for  the  first 
time  in  its  full  strength  in  the  Lectures  on  Anglican 
Difficulties,  and  subsequently  again  in  his  Lectures  on  ^ 
Catholicism  in  England,  but  assumed  perhaps  its  most 
exquisite  form  in  the  short  conversation  in  which  he 
summed  up  the  drift  of  his  controversy  with  Mr. 
I  Kingsley  on  the  supposed  countenance  which  he  had 
given  to  the  view  that  cunning,  and  not  truth,  is  the 
proper  weapon  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  her 
dealings  with  the  world.  But  in  spite  of  his  singular 
command  of  imaginative  eloquence,  of  the  most  rare 
and  delicate  pathos,  and  of  a  satire  finer  at  once  in  its 
point  and  in  its  reserve  than  any  satire  of  this  generation, 
Cardinal  Newman  has  never  apparently  felt  the  slightest 
disposition  or  desire  to  use  these  great  gifts  in  any 
cause  at  all  except  that  to  which  he  has  dedicated  his 
whole  life ;  and  the  finest  bit  of  irony  which  he  ever 
penned  he  suppressed  in  later  editions  of  his  work. 
Indeed,  widely  read  as  he  is  in  general  literature,  there 
are  probably  fewer  references  to  that  literature  in 
Cardinal  Newman's  writings  (if  we  except  perhaps  the 
lectures  on  The  Idea  of  a  Univeo^sity,  where  such  refer- 
ences were  almost  essential),  than  in  those  of  any  third- 
rate  or  fourth-rate  theologian  of  his  day.  Perhaps  the 
only  glimpse  which  the  English  world  has  had  of  his 
purely  literary  tastes  has  been  in  the  interest  he  has 
taken  in  adapting  the  plays  of  Terence  for  the  acting  of 
the  boys  of  his  Edgbaston  school,  and  the  skill  with 


HIS  GENUINENESS  AND  GREATNESS.  15 

which  he  has  trained  them  to  perform  their  parts  on  that 
little  classical  stage.  But  that  was  a  mere  fragment  of 
his  duties  as  head  of  a  Roman  Catholic  school,  in  the 
administration  of  which  he  was  concerned  to  show 
that  the  lighter  play  of  children's  minds  was  not  to  be 
neglected.  For  the  most  part,  the  long  series  of  his 
works  show  very  little  trace  indeed  of  the  deep  interest 
he  takes  in  general  literature,  so  completely  has  he 
subordinated  all  his  thoughts  and  cares  to  the  one  great 
purpose  of  his  life,  and  so  averse  has  he  been  to  allow 
himself  to  be  even  apparently  diverted  from  the  more 
serious  of  his  tasks.  I  think  there  is  hardly  any  other 
instance  in  our  literature  of  so  definite  and  remarkable 
a  literary  genius  being  entirely  devoted,  and  devoted  with 
the  full  ardour  of  a  brooding  imagination,  to  the  service 
of  revealed  religion.  For  it  has  been  definitely  revealed 
religion,  and  no  mere  philosophy  of  religion,  which  has 
absorbed  Cardinal  Newman's  attention  from  his  earliest 
youth  to  his  latest  age.  He  has  indeed  thought  much 
and  subtly  on  the  philosophy  of  faith,  as  a  long  series 
of  his  Oxford  sermons,  and  the  volume  entitled  The 
Gramma?-  of  Assent,  sufficiently  show.  But  with  him  the 
philosophy  of  faith  has  been  purely  subordinate  to  laying 
the  foundation  of  faith  in  Christian  doctrine  and  dosma, 
and  not  in  one  of  those  thin,  speculative  substitutes  for 
a  Christian  creed  which  have  so  often  been  in.  vogue 
among  rationalistic  mystics.  Whether  tried  then  by 
the  test  of  the  nobility,  intensity,  and  steadfastness  of 
his  work,  or  by  the  test  of  the  greatness  of  the  powers 
which  have  been  consecrated  to  that  work.  Cardinal 
Newman  has  been  one  of  the  greatest  of  our  modern 
great  men. 


CHAPTER  li. 

EARLY   LIFE  AT  HOME  AND  AT   OXFORD — NEWMAN'S 
DOGMATIC   CREED — HIS    BOOK   ON   THE  ARIANS. 

John  Henry  Newman  was  bora  in  London  on  the 
21st  of  February,  1801.  He  was  the  son  of  Mr.  John 
Newman,  a  member  of  the  banking  firm  of  Ramsbottom, 
Newman,  &  Co.,  who  at  one  time  lived  near  Blooms- 
bury  Square,  in  the  garden  of  which  John  Henry 
Newman  and  Benjamin  Disraeli  used  to  play  together 
about  1810.  The  bank  failed  soon  after  the  peace  of 
1815  had  caused  the  contraction  of  the  paper  currency 
and  the  rapid  fall  of  prices,  and  this  made  it  necessary 
for  Newman  to  take  his  degree  without  preparing  him- 
self for  honours,  at  the  earliest  possible  age. 

Mrs.  Newman  was  a  Miss  Fourdrinier,  a  member  of 
a  Huguenot  family  which  had  settled  in  London  as 
paper  manufacturers,  and  had  introduced  some  im- 
portant improvements  into  the  machinery  of  paper 
making.  She  was  a  moderate  Calvinist,  and  taught 
her  children  to  read  and  love  Scott,  Romaine,  Newton, 
Milner,  and  all  sincere  thinkers  of  ^lat  school.  From 
a  child  Newman  was  taught  to  take  great  delight  in 
the  Bible,  and  to  the  effect  produced  on  him  by  Scott's 
essays  and  commentary,  he  declares  that  he  may  almost 


HIS  EARLY  LIFE.  17 

be  said  "  to  owe  "  his  "  soul."      It  was  Scott's  "  bold 
unwoiidliness  "  and  "  vigorous  independence  of  mind  " 
which  so  deeply  impressed  him.     "  He  followed  truth," 
says  Dr.  Newman,  "  wherever  it  led  him,  beginning  with 
Unitarianism,  and  ending  in  a  zealous  faith  in  the  Holy 
Trinity;"  and  it  was  Scott  who  first  planted  deep  in  his 
mind  "  that  fundamental    truth  of  religion."     Indeed, 
before  he  was  sixteen  he  had  made  "a  collection  of 
Scripture  texts  in  proof  of  the  doctrine,"  with  remarks, 
he  believes,  of  his  own  upon  them.     And  upon  this 
foundation,  no  doubt,  was  erected  that  firm  faith  in  the 
necessity   of  dogma  as  part  and   parcel  of  revelation 
on  Avhich  in  later  life  he  so  often  insisted.     The  two 
principles  which  he  borrowed  from  Scott  as  "  the  scope 
and  issue  of  his  doctrine  "  were  "  Holiness  before  peace," 
and  "  Growth  the  only  evidence    of  life."     From  the 
time   when,   as  a   boy,   he   read    Law's   Serious   Call, 
Dr.  Newman  dates  his  firm  inward  assent  to  "  the  doc- 
trine of  eternal  punishments  as  delivered  by  our  Lord 
Himself,"  in  as  true  a  sense  as  he  held  that  of  eternal 
happiness,   though,    as   he   remarks,   he   has   tried    in 
various  ways  "  to  make  the  truth  less  terrible  to  the 
reason."     When    he    was   only    fifteen    he   took   great 
delight  in  reading  the  extracts  from  the  Fathers  which 
Milner  gives  in  his  Church  history,  and  which  prepos- 
s^sed  him  in  favour  of  the  conceptions  of  ecclesiastical 
influence  and  life  which  he  found   there,  even  at  the 
very  time  when  he  was  induced  to  take  up  from  Newton's 
book  on  the  prophecies,  a  notion  so  inconsistent  with 
the  belief  of  the  piimitive  Church,  as  that  the  Church 
of  Rome  is  Antichrist — a  conception  which  for  many 
years,   he   declares,    "  stained "   his   imagination,    even 
after  his  intellect  had  given  judgment  against  it. 

c 


18  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

And  in  the  same  year,  the  autumn  of  1816,  when  he 
was  not  yet  sixteen,  he  was  taken  possession  of  by  the 
conviction  that  it  was  God's  will  that  he  should  lead  a 
single  life,  a  conviction  which  held  its  ground  ever  since 
with  certain  brief  intervals  of  a  "  month  now  and  a  month 
then,"  up  to  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  after  which  it 
possessed  him  without  any  break  at  all.  Add  to  these 
impressions,  clearly  not  very  coherent,  since  his  admir- 
ation for  the  early  Fathers  was  certainly  wholly  incon- 
sistent with  his  belief  that  Rome  was  Antichrist,  the 
rather  capricious  doctrine  which  he  borrowed  from  a 
book  of  Romaine's,  that  men  know  whether  they  are  elect 
or  not,  and  that,  if  elect,  they  are  of  course  sure  of 
their  "  final  perseverance," — a  view  which  he  held  till 
a  year  or  two  after  he  had  taken  his  degree  at  Oxford, 
when  it  gradually  faded  away, — and  we  find  enough 
material  for  theological  fermentation  in  his  dreamy  and 
profoundly  susceptible  mind.  His  love  of  music  and  his 
skill  in  it  no  doubt  added  to  the  charm  of  a  somewhat 
dreamy  life. 

Newman  took  his  degree  in  1820,  a  few  months  before 
he  completed  his  twentieth  year,  and,  as  I  have  said,  he 
had  not  prepared  himself  for  honours  at  all  (though  he  re- 
ceived a  third  class  for  the  excellent  character  of  his  work), 
his  father's  failure  having  rendered  it  necessary  that  he 
should,  as  soon  as  possible,  be  independent  of  external 
aid.  His  early  University  life,  of  five  or  six  years,  was 
spent  at  Trinity  College,  and  he  is  said  to  have  published 
in  1821  two  cantos  of  a  poem  on  St.  Bartholomeio  s  Eve^ 
which  I  have  never  seen.  No  doubt  the  Huguenot 
traditions  in  his  mother's  family  rendered  that  event 
one  of  the  most  impressive  to  him  in  all  the  range  of 
modern  ecclesiastical  history,  and  perhaps  it  is  a  matter 


HIS  EAKLY  LIF^.  Id 

of  some  surprise  that  it  did  not  prove  to  have  ex- 
erted greater  influence  than  it  actually  did,  as  an 
antidote  to  his  patristic  prepossessions,  especially  in  con- 
nection with  Newton's  teaching  that  Rome  is  Antichrist. 
In  1823  Newman  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  in  Oriel 
College,  then  the  most  distinguished  in  the  University. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  was  most  lonely,  not  having 
as  yet  formed  any  close  friendships  in  Oriel,  and  feeling, 
as  he  says,  rather  "  proud  of  his  college  "  than  at  home 
there.  Dr.  Copleston,  who  was  at  that  time  Provost  of 
Oriel,  to  whom  Newman  afterwards  paid  so  fine  a 
tribute  in  his  lectures  on  The  Idea  of  a  University,  once 
met  him  taking  his  lonely  walk,  and  said  to  him  with  a 
bow  "Nunquam  minus  solus  quam  cum  solus,"  a  sen- 
tence which  must  always  have  described  Dr.  Newman's 
feeling  for  solitude,  though  he  soon  formed  an  intimate 
friendship  with  Dr.  Pusey,  which  lasted  to  the  end  of 
the  iatter's  life,  though  it  was,  of  course,  more  or  less 
broken  in  upon  by  Dr.  Newman's  conversion  to  Roman 
Catholicism.  In  the  same  year  he  first  read  Butler's 
Analogy,  and  gathered  from  it  two  principles,  which,  as 
he  tells  us  himself,  profoundly  influenced  his  future 
course  of  thought.  The  one  was  that  you  should  inter- 
pret the  less  certain  aspects  of  what  is  called  natural 
religion,  in  the  sense  of  revealed  religion,  and  not  vice 
versa,  in  other  words,  that  you  should  take  the  sacra- 
mental system  of  revealed  religion  as  the  key  to  natural 
religion,  and  look  at  material  phenomena  as  intended  to 
convey,  and  actually  conveying,  spiritual  influences... 
This  teaching  perfectly  fell  in  with  his  boyish  dream  that 
the  world  was  not  what  it  seemed,  and  that  a  certain 
disguise  of  higher  influences  under  a  material  mask 
might  be  involved  in  the  structural  principles  of  the 


20  CARDINAL  NEWMAK". 

universe.     And  this  teaching  was  confirmed  later    by 
Newman's  profound  love  for  Keble's  Christian  Year. 

Keble  was  a  fellow  of  liis  new  College,  and  his  volume 
of  poems  so  entitled  was  published  in  1827,  when  New- 
man was  already  beginning  to  exercise  a  considerable 
influence  at  Oriel  as  a  tutor  of  his  College  and  as  an 
examiner  in  the  University.  The  doctrine  "  that  material 
phenomena  are  both  the  types  and  the  instruments  of 
real  things  unseen  "  was  suggested  by  Butler's  principle 
that  there  is  a  real  analogy  between  the  system  of  nature 
and  the  system  of  revelation,  and  that  the  latter  should 
teach  us  to  interpret  the  former  rather  than  the  former 
to  interpret  the  latter,  while  Keble's  poetry  suggested  a 
hundred  ways  in  which  that  analogy  might  be  traced. 

The  second  principle  which  Newman  learned  from 
Butler  was,  that  "  probability  is  the  guide  of  life."  But 
he  could  not,  as  he  tells  us,  accept  this  as  satisfactory 
in  the  region  of  religious  belief.  If  it  were  possible  to 
act  on  such  a  principle,  "  the  celebrated  saying,  *  0 
God,  if  there  be  a  God,  save  my  soul,  if  I  have  a  soul/ 
would  be  a  legitimate  form  of  devotion ;  but,"  as  New- 
man asks,  "  *  who  can  really  pray  to  a  Being  about  whose 
existence  he  is  seriously  in  doubt  ? ' "  Might  not  the 
word  "  seriously  "  be  omitted  ?  Who  could  really  pray 
to  a  highly  probable  God,  to  a  God  for  the  reahty  of 
whose  existence  he  thinks  there  are  even  ninety-nine 
chances  against  one  ?  Is  it  prayer  till  you  recognize  your 
mental  contact  with  the  object  of  prayer  ?  Indeed 
Newman  felt  this  so  strongly,  and  felt  so  profoundly  the 
certainty  of  God's  relation  to  himself,  that  he  learned 
to  draw  a  distinction  between  the  reasons  which  he 
could  give  for  any  belief  and  the" certainty  with  which 
he  held  it,  holdino^  that  reasons  which  in  themselves 


HIS  DOGMATIC  CREED.  21 

only  amount  to  probabilities  are  often  transformed  into 
absolute  certitude  by  the  action  of  the  Divine  will. 
Thus  Newman  accepted  Butler's  teaching  only  so  far 
as  it  displayed  the  rational  j9?'C2)a7^a^zo;t  for  belief,  but 
rejected  it  so  far  as  it  suggested  that  any  doubt  as  to 
the  highest  truths  might  remain. 

During  the  earlier  part  of  his  life  at  Oriel  College 
Newman  made  a  fast  friendship  with  Dr.  Hawkins, 
afterwards  the  Provost  of  the  College,  and  he  attributes 
to  the  influence  of  Dr.  Hawkins  that  finer  care  in  the 
use  of  words,  that  delicacy  in  discriminating  between 
cognate  ideas,  that  habit  "  of  obviating  mistakes  by 
anticipation,  which  to  my  surprise  has  since  been 
considered,  even  in  quarters  friendly  to  me,  to  savour 
of  the  polemics  of  Rome."  Dr.  Hawkins  was  a  fine 
scholar,  and  a  scholar  who  was  no  more  of  a  casuist 
than  any  man  must  be  who  is  careful  in  distinguishing 
between  different  though  closely  related  ideas.  It 
seems  to  me  that  no  greater  mistake  was  ever  made 
tlian  in  ascribing  to  the  influence  of  Roman  Catholic 
craft  and  casuistry  that  delight  which  Cardinal  Newman 
has  always  taken  in  distinguishing  between  closely 
related  yet  quite  different  thoughts,  and  which  he 
learned  at  Oxford,  mostly  from  Dr.  Hawkins,  partly 
also  from  Dr.  Whately.  I  am  far  from  familiar  with 
Roman  Catholic  controversy,  but,  so  far  as  I  know  it,  it 
seems  to  me  to  be  rather  deficient  than  prolific  in  the 
sort  of  subtlety  which  springs  out  of  refined  scholar- 
ship. Casuistic  subtlety  is  one  thing,  and  scholarly  or 
psychological  subtlety  quite  another.  The  former, 
which  appears  to  be  so  abundant  in  the  manuals  of 
pastoral  theology  and  morality,  is  a  subtlety  that  has 
been  organized  for  a  particular  practical  purpose,  and 


22  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

which  often  ignores  the  most  important  differences 
when  that  practical  purpose  is  not  in  question.  But 
the  sort  of  subtlety  in  which  Dr.  Hawkins  and  Dr. 
Whately  were  very  soon  surpassed  by  their  companion 
and  pupil  was  a  very  different  thing — a  subtlety  born  of 
meditation,  self-scrutiny,  and  a  genuine  delight  in  the 
comparison  of  words  and  thoughts, — which  were  com- 
pared and  contrasted,  not  for  any  ulterior  jDurpose,  but 
solely  for  the  scientific  pleasure  derived  from  accurate 
classification  and  self-discipline. 

Dr.  Hawkins  also  taught  Newman  "  the  doctrine  of 

tradition,"  namely,  that  the  tradition  of  the    Church 

was  the  original  authority  for  doctrinal  statements,  and 

that  Scripture  was  never  intended  to  supply  the  first 

converts  with  their  doctrinal  creed,  but  only  to  afford 

,  the  verification  of  that  creed  with  which  the  tradition  of 

the  Church  had  furnished  them.     Just  in  the  same  way 

vno  one  would  look  in  the  law-reports  for  the  systematic 

(doctrines  of  English  law,  or  in  parliamentary  debates 

/for  the  accepted  principles  of  the  English  constitution; 

\but  when   the   principles  of  English    law  and  of  the 

)  English  constitution  had  been  explicitly  laid  down,  the 

/  authorities  which  laid  them   down  would  verify  them 

/   by    references     respectively    to     the    law   reports    or 

Vparliamentary  debates. 

Thus  Newman  early  came  to  assume  that  the  living 
Church  was  the  body  to  which  we  must  still  cling,  both 
for  the  explicit  statement  of  our  creed  and  for  the  ex- 
plicit exposition  of  rites  and  their  significance;  while 
he  regarded  Scripture  only  as  containing  that  body  of 
facts  to  which  the  Church  referred  as  her  authority  for 
the  creed  which  she  inculcated,  and  for  the  worship  she 
enjoined. 


HIS  DOGMATIC  CREED.  23 

In  Lis  book  on  The  Arians  of  the  Fourth  Centiiry 
Newman  gave  full  expression  to  his  confidence  that 
dogma  is  the  backbone  of  religion,  and  this  he  has 
always  asserted  with  the  utmost  consistency  and  energy. 
"  From  the  age  of  fifteen,"  he  says  in  the  Apologia, 
"dogma  has  been  the  fundamental  principle  of  my 
religion ;  I  know  no  other  religion ;  I  cannot  enter  into 
the  idea  of  any  other  sort  of  religion ;  religion  as  a  mere 
sentiment  is  to  me  a  dream  and  a  mockery.  As  well 
can  there  be  filial  love  without  the  fact  of  a  father,  as 
devotion  without  the  fact  of  a  Supreme  Being.  What 
I  held  in  1816  I  held  in  1833,  and  I  hold  in  1864. 
Please  God  I  shall  hold  it  to  the  end.  Even  when  I 
was  under  Dr.  Whately's  influence  I  had  no  temptation 
to  be  less  zealous  for  the  great  dogmas  of  the  faith,  and 
at  various  times  I  used  to  resist  such  trains  of  thouo^ht 
on  his  part  as  seemed  to  me  (rightly  or  wrongly)  to 
obscure  them."  ^  I  suppose  that  all  clear-headed  men 
will  agree  with  Cardinal  Newman  in  admitting  that, 
without  the  confession  of  certain  intellectual  truths, 
and  without  a  careful  sifting  of  what  these  truths  are, 
there  is  no  possibility  of  the  safe  preservation  of  any 
Divine  revelation.  But  surely  in  this  and  other  similar 
passages  of  his  works  he  a  little  confuses  between  the 
intellectual  conceptions  which  are  necessarily  implied 
in  the  fact  of  revelation,  and  the  life  and  character 
which  are  the  subjects  of  revelation.  It  is  perfectly  true 
that  we  cannot  have  filial  feelings  without  a  father  or 
mother,  and  that  we  cannot  have  a  father  or  mother 
without  a  full  intellectual  assent  to  the  assertion  of 
their  existencOj  and  to  a  good  many  other  statements 

^  Apologia,  p.  120. 


24  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

as  to  the  mind  and  character  of  that  father  or  nniother. 
But   it   is    also    perfectly    true    that    many   of    those 
/     statements  will   be   more  or  less   mistaken, — deflected 
from  the  truth  by  our  natural  incapacity  to  enter  fully 
\     into  the  mind  and  character  of  others.     And  therefore 
1     it  does  not  in  the  least  follow  that,  though  there  can 
'    be  no  true  worship  without  our  admitting  the  existence 
of    God,   and    various    great    truths    about    God,   all 
that   we   say   about   God   need   be   nearly   as   certain 
I  as  the  very  fact  of  His  existence  must  be,  nor  even 
j  that  all  that  is  revealed  about  God  need  be  quite  as 
/    clear   and   quite   as   free    from   liability  to   misunder- 
I     standing   as    the   great    fact   itself   of    His    existence 
\  and  of  His  holiness.     If  the  great  object  of   Christ's 
Mncarnation  was  the  revelation  of  God  Himself  to  the 
world,  not  the  revelation  of  dogmas  concerning  God, 
then   the  primary  object  of  Christ's  life,  and  of    the 
life  of  the  Church,  was  the  unveiling  of  the  reality,  for 
which    purpose    the   due   definition   and   guarding   of 
dogma   was   only  a  secondary  and   subordinate   duty. 
As  the  Church  itself  admitted,  and  even  maintained, 
it  was  quite  possible  both  to  feel  rightly  and  to  think 
rightly    in   relation   to    God   without    using  the   best 
or  most  accurate  words  to  express  those  right  thoughts 
and  right  feelings ;  and  again,  it  is  perfectly  easy  to 
conceive  that  a  multitude  of  Christians  may  have  had 
the  right  feelings  towards  God  without  having  had  the 
most   accurate   and  clearly  defined   thoughts  concern- 
ing His  essential  being.      Dogma  is  essential  in  order 
'    to  display  and  safeguard  the  revelation,  but  dogma  is 
not  itself  the  revelation.     And  it  is  conceivable  that 
in   drawing  out   and   safeguarding  the  revelation,  the 
Church  may  not  unfrequently  have  laid  even  too  much 


HIS  DOGMATIC  CREED.  25 

stress  on  right  conceptions,  and  too  little  on  right 
attitudes  of  will  and  emotion.  Dogma  is  only  subsidiary 
to  that  unveiling  of  God  to  man  which  is  the  single 
aim  of  revelation,  and  instead  of  being  made  subsidiary, 
it  is  sometimes  made  to  stand  in  the  place  of  that  to 
which  it  ought  to  be  purely  instrumental.  ^ 

In  his  first  theological  book,  that  on  The  Arians  of  the 
Fourth  Ceniicry,  Newman  himself  admitted  this  when  he 
said,  "  while  the  line  of  tradition,  drawn  out,  as  it  was,  to 
the  distance  of  two  centuries  from  the  Apostles,  had  at 
length  been  of  too  frail  a  texture  to  resist  the  touch  of 
subtle  and  ill-directed  reason,  the  Church  was  naturally 
unwillinof  to  have  recourse  to  that  novel  thous^h 
necessary  measure  of  imposing  an  authoritative  creed 
on  those  whom  it  invested  with  the  office  of  teaching. 
If  I  avow  my  belief  that  freedom  from  symbols  and 
articles  is  abstractedly  the  highest  state  of  Christian 
communion,  and  the  peculiar  privilege  of  the  primitive 
Church,  it  is  not  from  any  tenderness  towards  that/ 
proud  impatience  of  control  in  which  many  exult  as  in' 
a  virtue,  but  first  because  technicality  and  formalism 
are,  in  their  degree,  inevitable  results  of  public  con- 
fessions of  faith ;  and  next  because,  where  confessions 
do  not  exist,  the  mysteries  of  Divine  truth,  instead  of 
being  exposed  to  the  gaze  of  the  profane  and  unin- 
structed,  are  kept  hidden  in  the  bosom  of  the  Church 
far  more  faithfully  than  is  otherwise  possible,  and 
reserved,  by  a  private  teaching  through  the  channel 
of  her  ministers,  as  rewards  in  due  measure  and  season 
for  those  who  are  prepared  to  profit  by  them — for 
those,  that  is,  who  are  diligently  passing  through  the 
successive  stages  of  faith  and  obedience."  ^ 

^  Arians  of  the  Fourth  Century ^  chap.  i.  sec.  ii. 


26  •  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

The  admission  that  "  technicality  and  formalism " 
necessarily  follow  on  dogmatic  definitions  is  important, 
but  hardly  adequate  to  the  truth.  Tlie  real  danger  is, 
that  the  pains  taken  to  understand,  and  avail  themselves 
of,  theological  safeguards  against  error,  shall  super- 
sede in  men's  minds  the  habit  of  gazing  steadily  at  the 
fulness  of  the  Divine  character  as  gradually  unveiled 
to  them,  though  the  diffusion  of  this  habit  is  the  end 
and  aim  of  Hebrew  prophecy  and  the  purpose  of 
Christ's  life  and  death  and  resurrection.  Dogma  is 
analysis  and  inference,  and  necessarily  inadequate 
analysis  and  inference.  Such  analysis  and  inference 
are  forced  on  the  Church  by  denials  which  tend  to 
obscure  the  revelation  given.  But  for  those  who  were 
not  likely  to  have  been  tempted  and  misled  by  those 
denials,  dogmatic  teaching  may  be  positively  mischievous 
as  fixing  their  attention  too  exclusively  on  those  aspects 
of  revelation  which  are  the  least  likely  to  develop 
a  spiritual  life.  In  The  Avians  of  the  Fourth  Century 
Newman  illustrated  very  effectively  what  he  found 
in  dogma  that  was  really  essential  to  the  true 
apprehension  of  revelation. 

And  I  cannot  better  deal  with  this  early  and  very 
careful  bit  of  work  than  by  giving  some  specimen  of  its 
bearing  on  Newman's  great  principle  that  dogma  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  revelation.  The  book  was  finished 
in  July,  1832,  before  the  movement  of  1833  began,  and 
was  published  at  the  end  of  1833.  It  may  be  said  to 
have  closed  the  first  section  of  Newman's  life.  It  is  in 
many  respects  of  high  interest  for  its  close  reasoning 
and  strict  fidelity  to  principle,  though  it  displays  little 
of  the  literary  skill  of  his  later  writings,  being,  indeed, 
dry  almost  to  grittiness.     If  God,  he  says,  did  not  send 


HIS   DOGMATIC  CREED.  27 

His  own  Son  into  the  world  to  be  a  ransom  for  sinners, 
and  to  inspire  them  with  a  new  passion  of  devotion  to 
their  Creator,  and  a  new  loathing  for  the  evil  in  them- 
selves, then  the  whole  story  of  revelation,  of  which  the 
climax  is  anticipated  in  the  account  of  Abraham's  willing- 
ness to  give  up  his  only  son  Isaac  at  the  invitation  of 
God,  is  a  dream,  and  the  life  of  men  on  earth  is  robbed 
of  its  spiritual  mainstay.  Yet,  in  order  to  safeguard  the 
truth  of  this  revelation,  if  once  it  be  denied  and  dis- 
sected by  the  sceptic,  how  much  dogmatic  analysis  and 
definition,  and  of  precautionary  explanation  is  necessary! 
In  fact,  the  whole  Arian  and  Nestorian  controversies  are 
raised  at  once,  so  soon  as  an  objector  begins  to  recount 
the  difficulties  which  beset  the  mind  when  it  encounters 
such  a  revelation  as  this.  If  Christ  were  separate  from 
God,  then  the  love  of  God  in  giving  up  Christ  to  death 
for  man  would  be  in  no  wise  specially  attested ;  the 
sacrifice  of  Isaac  would  have  been,  in  fact,  a  greater 
sacrifice,  relatively  to  the  power  and  character  of  the 
human  being  who  made  it,  than  was  the  sacrifice  on 
Calvary.  But  if  Christ  were  God,  how  much  has  to  be 
explained  in  order  to  save  this  teaching  from  the  alterna- 
tive objection  of  either  publishing  to  the  world  the  love 
of  a  God  who  could  cease  to  exist,  or  publishing  some- 
thing like  a  dramatic  fiction  in  place  of  the  greatest 
and  most  mysterious  of  all  truths.  Scripture  insists, 
remarks  Newman,  that  Christ  is  not  only  spoken  of  as 
God's  Son  in  respect  of  His  pre-existent  nature,  but 
in  respect  of  His  human  nature,  and  that,  in  order  to 
fix  this  idea  firmly  in  our  minds,  He  is  called  not  only 
the  Son  of  God  in  the  state  in  which  He  lived  before 
He  appeared  on  earth,  but  absolutely  God's  "  Son,"  or 
"  only-begotten  "  Son.     And  this  is  announced  in  terms 


28  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

which  are  intended  to  assert  that  whatever  was  in  God 
was  in  the  Son  of  God.     "  As  the  Father  hath  life  in 
Himself,  so  hath  He  given  to  the  Son  to  have  life  in 
Himself ....  that  all  men  should  honour  the  Son  even 
as  they  honour  the  Father;"  but  then  the  word  "Son" 
implies  subordination,  and  Christ  Himself  asserted  "  My 
Father  is  greater  than  I ; "  and  there  the  Arian  con- 
ception at  once  enters,  and  if  the  word  "  Son  "  be  too 
much  insisted  on  in  the  sense  which  it  bears  in  our 
human  relations,  there  will  be   a   tendency  either   to 
regard  the  Son  of  God  as  a  creature,  and  therefore,  so 
far  as  He  is  worshipped,  there  will  be  a  tendency  to 
worship  a  creature  as  Creator ;  or  else  in  denying  the 
Son  of  God  the  true  Divine  nature,  to  withdraw  from 
Him  all  worship  properly  so  called,  which  the  Aiians  and 
Unitarians,  who  have  legitimately  developed  the  Arian 
idea,  actually  have  done.     But  against  this  degradation 
of  Christ  from  the  divinity  so  persistently  asserted  for 
Him  in  Scripture,  the  whole  drift  of  the  revelation  pro- 
tests.    And  in  order  to  secure  the  idea  of  "  Son  "  from 
the  materialistic  misconceptions  so  engrafted  on  it,  the 
revelation  of  Christ  as  the  Word,  or  Reason,  or  Wisdom 
of  God  is  given  us,  "  to  denote  His  essential  presence  in 
the  Father  in  as  full  a  sense  as  the  attribute  of  wisdom 
is  essential  to  Him."   And  also  to  denote  His  mediation 
— that  it  is   through  Him   that  the  Father 'speaks  to 
men — this  declaration  that  the  Son  is  also  the  Word  of 
God  is  subjoined,  and  guards  us  against  the  impression 
that  He  is  as  individually  distinct  from  the  Father  as 
a  human  son  from  a  human  father;  indeed,  it  compels 
us  to  think  of  Him  as  identified  with  the  Father  in 
some    sense   much   closer   than  sonship  in   its  human 
aspects  would  imply.      But  here  again   comes  in  the 


tJlS  DOGMATIC  CREED.  §d 

danger,  tliat  in  speaking  of  Christ  as  the  Word  or 
Wisdom  of  God,  the  sense  of  a  separate  personality 
Avould  be  obliterated,  which  would  end  in  the  notion  that 
the  Father  died  upon  the  cross.  To  obviate  this  danger 
Cln^ist  is  spoken  of  as  the  Word  of  God  in  a  separate 
personality,  as  a  permanently  existing,  real,  and  living 
Word,  not  as  the  mere  breath  or  voice  of  the  Father. 
All  these  definitions  are  requisite  in  order  to  protect 
the  notion  that  Christ  was  at  once  "  of  God  "  and  "  in 
God,"  without  both  of  which  it  would  be  impossible  to 
read  His  life  and  death  at  once  truly  and  spiritually 
and  to  give  Him  the  love  and  worship  which  He 
claims.  I  have  been  obliged  to  summarize,  but  this 
close  piece  of  reasoning  will  give  an  age  which  has 
almost  forgotten  what  the  claims  of  theological  dogma 
are,  some  insight  into  Newman's  vigorous  and  strenuous 
work. 

Of  course  I  have  no  intention  of  following  Newman 
through  the  careful  and  scholarly  book  on  the  Arians. 
My  only  object  is  to  make  it  quite  clear,  that  in  defend- 
ing dogma  he  was  defending  what  is  at  once  essential 
to  the  very  life  and  essence  of  the  story  of  Christ's  sac- 
rifice for  man  in  which  Divine  revelation  culminates, 
and  yet  that  in  thus  defending  it,  there  is  very  great 
danger  of  losing  sight  of  the  core  of  the  revelation,  and 
indeed  a  moral  certainty  that  many  of  those  who  would 
never  have  killed  the  soul  of  revelation  by  insisting  on 
analyzing  and  dissecting  its  meaning  for  themselves, 
have  been  diverted  from  what  is  most  moving  and  most 
elevating  in  it  by  the  necessity  of  studying  definitions 
and  explanations  for  which  they  had  no  craving  and 
would  never  have  asked.  I  think  the  book  shows  that 
to  some  extent  Newman  underrated  this  unfortunate 


30  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

effect  of  dogma  on  the  most  spiritual  minds,  and  that 
he  thought  of  dogma  a  little  too  much  as  the  essence, 
instead  of  as  the  mere  protective  covering,  of  revelation. 
The  substance  of  revelation  is  the  character  of  God,  and  . 
dogma  is  only  necessary  to  those  whose  minds  cannot 
enter  into  this  marvellous  revelation  of  the  character 
of  God   and   of  His   love   for   man  without  asking  a 
hundred  questions  to  which,  in  our  present  state,  only 
very  imperfect  and  unsatisfactory  answers  can  be  given 
— answers  that  only  show  how  much  greater  are  the 
difficulties  of  the  semi-sceptics  than  of  the  hearty  be- 
lievers, and  do  not  show  that  Christian  faith  is  itself 
,free  from  serious  difficulty.    In  fact,  the  only  attitude  in 
which  the  mere,  intellect  of  man  can  rest  easily,  is  the 
attitude  of  ignoring  the  whole  difficulty  and  acquiescing 
in  pure  agnosticism.     But  then  that  is  an  attitude  in 
which  the  soul  of  man  cannot  rest  at  all, — nor  even  the 
intellect  of  a  man  who  has  a  soul  as  well  as  an  intel- 
lect.    But  for  the  predominantly  intellectual,  dogmatic 
theology  is  a  noble  study,  especially  if  it  is  so  pursued 
as  to  remind  them  that  the  most  it  can  effect  is  to 
point  out  the  path  of  least  resistance  for  the  understand- 
ing that  is  coupled  with  a  Christian  heart  and  soul, 
and  the  much  greater  difficulties  into  which  the  under- 
standing must  plunge  if  it  passes  into  a  heretical  region 
of  thought.     Theology,  no   doubt,  is   to   some   extent 
truly  described  as  a  line  of  escape  which  passes  between 
the  devil  and  the  deep  sea.     If  we  are  to  believe  with 
all  our  hearts  the  only  life-giving  story  of  the  Creator's 
purposes  and  love,  of  which  human  history  has  furnished 
us  with   any  trace,  we  must  take    our  way    between 
moral  recklessness  and  self-will  on  the  one  side,  and 
that  apathy  which  springs  out  of  utter  despair  of  finding 


HIS  DOGMATIC  CREED.  31 

a  solution  for  the  problem  of  life  on  the  other  side. 
And  no  doubt  even  that  way  is  not  without  its  perils, 
but  these  perils  can,  I  think,  be  shown  to  be  much  less 
than  those  of  believers  who,  while  clinging  to  the 
gospel  of  Christ,  try  to  get  rid  of  all  the  subtleties  and 
distinctions  of  theological  science.  And  this  is  what 
Newman's  book  on  the  Arians  so  carefully  and 
elaborately  shows. 

The  book,  too,  has  another  interest  besides  the  great 
precision  and  delicacy  with  which  Newman  traced  out 
the  precise  positions  of  the  various  heretical  thinkers, 
from  Sabellius  to  Arius,  including  the  whole  school  of 
semi-Arians,  who  were  the  antagonists  of  Athanasius. 
It  shows  Newman's  delight  in  the  Alexandrian  school 
of  theology,  with  its  emphatic  teaching  as  to  the 
secondary  or  allegorical  interpretation  of  Scripture,  its 
reserve  and  its  very  gradual  unfolding  of  the  mysteries 
of  Christianity  to  its  catechumens,  its  conception  of  the 
Divine  "  economy  "  of  revelation,  and  its  doctrine  that 
fragments  of  the  teaching  that  had  been  carefully 
concentrated  and  kept  continuous  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Jews,  are  to  be  found  scattered  widely  through  the 
Pagan  world.  Newman  was  the  first  to  deny  that 
Arianism  was  of  Alexandrian  origin,  and  to  maintain, 
what  scholars  now  generally  admit,  that  it  originated 
in  Antioch.  Indeed,  Newman  loved  the  Greek  the- 
ology so  well  that  he  quickly  discovered  its  essential 
orthodoxy,  and  the  Judaizing  affinities  of  the  Arian 
heresy,  which  had  previously  been  supposed  to  origin- 
ate with  Arius  himself.  Newman's  book  was  mfeant 
as  a  vindication  of  the  Alexandrian  school  of  theology 
from  all  direct  responsibility  for  that  heresy.  And  in 
this  I  believe  he  fully  succeeded. 


S2  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

As  a  great  deal  of  the  prejudice  against  Dr.  New- 
man has  been  founded  on  his  defence  of  the  Alex- 
andrian principle  of  spiritual  economies  to  be  practised 
by  men  in  teaching  revealed  truth,  just  as  it  was 
practised  by  God  in  revealing  it,  I  must  say  a  few 
words  on  that  subject.  Newman  pleads  that  St.  Paul 
was  practising  an  "  economy  "  when  on  Mars  hill  he 
availed  himself  first  of  the  altar  erected  to  the  Unknown 
God,  and  next  of  the  authority  of  a  Greek  for  the 
doctrine  of  God's  fatherhood,  instead  of  starting  from 
the  ground  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  which  was  of 
course  his  own  starting-point ;  nay,  that  the  first  chapter 
of  the  book  of  Job,  in  which  Satan  is  represented  as 
commissioned  by  God  to  tempt  Job  and  prove  his 
fidelity,  and  the  twenty-second  cliapter  of  the  first 
book  of  Kings,  in  which  God  is  represented  as  asking 
for  a  lying  spirit  to  entice  Ahab  to  his  destruction  by 
inducing  the  prophets  of  Israel  to  prophesy  falsely  con- 
cerning his  engagement  with  the  king  of  Syria  at 
Ramoth-gilead,  are  both  evidently  "  economical "  in  the 
sense  that  they  do  not  convey  absolute  truth  concerning 
the  ways  of  God,  but  only  "  substantial  truth  in  the 
form  in  which  we  were  best  able  to  receive  it."  Again, 
he  argues  that  the  Mosaic  dispensation  as  a  whole  is 
an  obvious  "  economy  "  "  simulating  unchangeableness, 
though  from  the  first  it  was  destined  to  be  abolished." 
In  any  case,  our  Lord's  own  declaration,  "  I  have  yet 
many  other  things  to  say  unto  you,  but  ye  cannot  bear 
them  now.  Howbeit,  when  He,  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
is  come.  He  shall  guide  you  into  all  truth,  for  He 
shall  not  speak  of  Himself;  but  whatsoever  things  He 
shall  hear,  those  shall  He  speak;  and  He  shall  show 
you    things    to    come,"    is   as   express   a   sanction    of 


HIS  DOGMATIC  CREED.  33 

"  economy  "  as  belonging  to  the  very  principle  of  God's 
revelation  as  can  well  be  conceived  ;  and  it  seems  almost 
trivial  to  say  that  that  which  the  providence  of  God 
sanctions,  the  prudence  of  man  should  not  despise.  Of 
course  it  is  quite  another  question  whether  the  conceit 
of  prudence  may  not  suggest,  and  sometimes  practise, 
a  mischievous  reticence,  and  keep  back  portions  of  the 
Divine  revelation  which,  if  not  withheld,  would  be  the 
best  fitted  to  make  a  profound  impression  on  the  heart. 
That  is  a  question  of  individual  judgment  and  moral 
insight ;  but  to  contend  that  the  principle  of  economy 
is  to  be  condemned  in  toto,  is  about  as  silly  as  to  con- 
tend that  what  is  suitable  for  impressing  the  hearts  of 
grown-up  men  and  women,  is  equally  suitable  for  im- 
pressing the  hearts  of  children ;  or  that  what  is  fitted 
for  the  ears  of  the  highly-educated,  is  equally  fitted  for 
the  ears  of  the  ignorant  and  superstitious.  I  do  not 
myself  think  that  Newman  can  be  justly  accused  of 
any  disposition  to  push  the  principle  of  "  economy " 
to  excess.  If  he  has  ever  done  so,  it  is  only  by 
making  occasional  alterations  in  the  original  text  of 
his  own  books  without  calling  attention  to  them.  And 
this  has,  I  think,  been  rather  due  to  a  dislike  for 
avowing  the  variations  in  his  own  judgment  than  to 
any  dislike  for  speaking  his  mind  freely  enough  while 
he  is  about  it.  The  principle  of  "economy"  is  nothing 
in  the  world  but  good  sense  applied  to  the  question  of 
the  best  mode  of  bringing  home  God's  truth  to  the 
minds  of  others. 


D 


CHAPTER   III. 

HURRELL  FROUDE  AND   THE  MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE. 

The  friendship  between  Newman  and  Mr.  Hurrell 
Froude,  the  elder  brother  of  the  historian,  which  com- 
Hienced  in  1826,  and  became  intimate  in  1829,  lasting 
thence  to  Mr.  Fronde's  death  from  consumption  in 
1836,  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  important  influences 
which  acted  on  Newman's  career  at  the  most  critical 
period  of  his  life.  Newman's  was  one  of  the  minds 
which  matured  slowly,  and  it  was  not  till  he  ^vas 
twenty-six  years  of  age  that  it  became  clear  whether  he 
would  be  in  the  main  a  religious  leader  or  one  of  the 
pillars  o^  the  Whately  party,  that  is,  the  party  who 
threw  their  influence  into  the  scale  of  minimizing  the 
spiritual  aspect  and  spiritual  significance  of  revelation 
rather  than  of  maximizing  it.  Newman  himself  mentions, 
that  for  two  or  three  years  before  1827  he  was  "begin- 
ning to  prefer  intellectual  excellence  to  moral,"  or  in 
other  words,  "  drifting  in  the  direction  of  Liberalism." 
"  I  was  rudely  awakened  from  my  dream  at  the  end  of 
1827  by  two  great  blows,  illness  and  bereavement,"  and 
then  in  1829  came  fuller  intimacy  with  Hurrell  Froude, 
which  seems  to  have  fully  determined,  if  anything  were 


MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE.  35 

then  needed  to  determine,  the  direction  in  which  his 
mind  would  proceed.  Mr.  Hurrell  Froude  was,  as  New- 
man describes  him,  a  man  of  the  highest  gifts — gentle, 
tender,  playful,  versatile,  and  of  the  most  winning 
patience  and  considerateness  in  discussion.  He  was 
a  man  of  high  genius,  "  brimful  and  overflowing  with 
ideas  and  views,  in  him  original,  which  were  too  many 
and  strong  even  for  his  bodily  strength,  and  which 
crowded  and  jostled  against  each  other  in  their  effort 
after  distinct  shape  and  expression.  And  he  had  an 
intellect  as  critical  and  logical  as  it  was  speculative 
and  bold.  He  professed  openly  his  admiration  of  the 
Church  of  Kome  and  his  hatred  of  the  Reformers. 
He  delighted  in  the  notion  of  an  hierarchical  system, 
of  sacerdotal  power,  and  of  full  ecclesiastical  liberty. 
He  felt  scorn  of  the  maxim  *  the  Bible  and  the  Bible 
only  as  the  religion  of  Protestants ' ;  and  he  gloried 
in  accepting  tradition  as  a  main  instrument  of  re- 
ligious teaching.  He  had  a  high,  severe  idea  of  the 
intrinsic  excellence  of  virginity,  and  he  considered  the 
Blessed  Virgin  the  great  pattern.  He  delighted  in 
thinking  of  the  saints ;  he  had  a  keen  appreciation  of 
the  idea  of  sanctity,  its  possibility  and  its  heights,  and 
he  was  more  than  inclined  to  believe  a  large  amount 
of  miraculous  interference  as  occurring  in  the  early  and 
middle  ages.  He  embi^aced  the  principle  of  penance  and 
mortification.  He  had  a  deep  devotion  to  the  Real 
Presence,  in  which  he  had  a  firm  faith.  He  was  power- 
fully drawn  to  the  mediaeval  Church,  but  not  to  the 
primitive."  Dr.  Newman  adds,  that  Hurrell  Froude  "was 
fond  of  historical  inquiry  and  the  politics  of  religion. 
He  had  no  turn  for  theology  as  such.  He  had  no 
appreciation   of  the   writings  of  the   Fathers,  of  the 


36  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

detail  or  development  of  doctrine,  of  the  definite 
traditions  of  the  Church  viewed  in  their  matter,  of  the 
teaching  of  the  (Ecumenical  Councils,  or  of  the  con- 
troversies out  of  which  they  arose."  He  was  "  a  high 
Tory  of  the  Cavalier  stamp,  and  was  disgusted  with  the 
Toryism  of  the  opponents  of  the  Reform  Bill."  ^  And 
I  feel  little  doubt  that  Dr.  Newman's  wrath  against 
"  Liberalism,"  as  for  many  years  afterwards  he  always 
called  it, — identifying  as  he  did  Liberalism  with  Lati- 
tudinarianism, — was  to  a  very  considerable  extent  a 
moral  contagion  caught  from  Hurrell  Froude. 

There  are  a  few  singularly  beautiful  lines  added  by 
Newman  after  Hurrell  Froude's  death  in  1836  to  the 
exquisite  poem  called  Separation  of  Friends,  written  in 
1833;  and  these  sufficiently  prove  the  tenderness  of 
Newman's  friendship  for  Hurrell  Froude,  and  the  in- 
timacy of  the  relation  between  them.  The  poem  as  it 
was  first  written  on  the  separation  between  friends 
caused  by  death,  ran  thus — 


"  Do  not  their  souls,  who  'neath  the  altar  wait 

Until  their  second  birth, 
The  gift  of  patience  need,  as  separate 

From  their  first  friends  of  earth  1 
Not  that  earth's  blessings  are  not  all  outshone 

By  Eden's  Angel  flame, 
But  that  Earth  knows  not  that  the  Dead  has  won 

That  Crown  which  was  his  aim. 
For  when  he  left  it,  'twas  a  twilight  scene 

About  his  silent  bier, 
A  breathless  struggle,  Faith  and  Sight  between, 

And  Hope  and  sacred  Fear. 
Fear  startled  at  his  pains  and  dreary  end, 

Hope  raised  her  chalice  high. 
And  the  twin-sisters  still  his  shade  attend, 

Viewed  in  the  mourner's  eye. 

^  Apologia,  pp.  84-6. 


MEDITERKANEAN  VOYAGE,  37 

So  day  by  day  for  him  from  earth  ascends, 

As  dew  in  summer  even, 
The  speechless  intercession  of  his  friends, 

Towards  the  azure  heaven." 

This  was  an  abrupt  close.  Nearly  three  years  later 
it  appeared  that  the  true  close  had  but  been  reserved 
till  the  friend  with  whom  in  his  illness  Newman  had 
been  travelling,  had  left  him  alone  here  to  offer  this 
"speechless  intercession"  on  behalf  of  him  who  had 
departed.  Then  after  Froudo's  death,  on  the  28th 
February,  1836,  Newman  added  the  final  lines — 

"  Ah  !  dearest,  with  a  word  he  could  dispel 

All  questioning,  and  raise 
Our  hearts  to  rapture,  whispering  all  was  well, 

And  turning  prayer  to  praise. 
And  other  secrets  too  he  could  declare. 

By  patterns  all  divine, 
His  earthly  creed  retouching  here  and  there, 

And  deepening  every  line. 
Dearest !  he  longs  to  speak  as  I  to  know, 

And  yet  we  both  refrain  : 
It  were  not  good  ;  a  little  doubt  below, 

And  all  will  soon  be  plain." 

Such  was  Newman's  feeling  for  the  friend — already 
suffering  from  the  commencement  of  the  consumption 
of  which  he  died  three  years  later — with  whom  he 
visited  the  Mediterranean,  between  December  1832  and 
April  1833,  when  they  separated  at  Rome — Newman  to 
turn  to  Sicily,  where  he  fell  ill,  and  to  spend  some- 
thing like  three  months  of  solitude  after  his  four  months' 
voyage  along  the  African,  Greek,  and  Italian  coasts.  It 
was  on  this  journey  that  the  remarkable  series  of  verses 
afterwards  published  with  the  signature  b  in  the  Zyra 
A;postolica, — some  of  them  poems  of  the  purest  beauty, 


38  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

some  of  them  mere  doctrinal  or  didactic  or  theologico- 
political  anathemas, — were  first  written. 

The  isles  of  Greece  are  closely  associated  with  another 
great  name,  but  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  more  marvel- 
lous contrast  than  that  between  the  attitude  of  feel- 
ing with  which  Byron  gazed  on  the  scenes  in  which 
"burning  Sappho  lived  and  sung,"  and  where,  as,  with 
his  genuine  passion  for  political  liberty,  he  delighted  to 
remember,  there  "grew  the  arts  of  war  and  peace," 
and  that  with  which  Newman  and  Froude,  well 
versed  indeed  in  the  classical  associations  of  those 
rocky  shores,  but  still  more  deeply  interested  in  the 
ecclesiastical  memories  they  stirred,  gazed  upon  them. 
They  visited  Ithaca,  but  in  his  poems  written  "off 
Ithaca"  Newman  never  mentions  the  name  of  Ulysses, 
though  in  passing  Lisbon  he  had  recalled  that  strong 
pagan  figure  in  the  lines  which  he  headed  The  Isles  of 
the  Sirens — 

"  Cease,  stranger,  cease  those  piercing  notes, 
The  craft  of  Siren  choirs  ; 
Hush  the  seductive  voice  that  floats 
Upon  the  languid  wires. 

Music's  ethereal  fire  was  given, 

Not  to  dissolve  our  clay, 
But  draw  Promethean  beams  from  Heaven, 
And  purge  the  dross  away. 

Weak  self  !  with  thee  the  mischief  lies — 

Those  throbs  a  tale  disclose  ; 
Nor  age  nor  trial  has  made  wise 

The  Man  of  many  woes." 

There  you  see  some  trace  of  the  influence  of  Fronde's 
high  ascetic  nature  speaking  in  the  heart  of  a  devotee 
of  music,  but  a  devotee  of  music  of  the  most  exalted 
kind.  Hurrell  Froude  in  a  letter  home  mentions 
that  the  commander  of  the   steamer  in  which   they 


MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE.  39 

sailed  sang  several  songs,  accompanying  himself  on  the 
Spanish  guitar,  and  it  must  have  been  these  songs  which 
suggested  to  Newman  The  Isles  of  the  Sirens. 

When  the  friends  reach  Ithaca,  Newman  seems  to 
forget  "  the  man  of  many  woes  "  altogether  ;  he  is  musing 
on  the  difficulty  and  duty  of  keeping  himself  "  unspotted 
from  the  world,"  which  is  the  last  thing  I  suppose 
that  Homer's  Ulysses  ever  thought  about,  while  Byron 
in  the  same  scenes  thought  only  of  how  he  could  spot 
himself  most  effectually  ;  or  if  Newman  indulges  for 
a  moment  in  the  reminiscence  of  that  strong  ideal 
passion  for  his  native  country  which  made  Ulysses  pine 
for  the  bare  and  rocky  islet  amidst  the  seductions  of 
the  isle  of  Calypso  and  the  flattery  of  his  Phseacian 
hosts,  it  only  suggests  to  him  to  paint  that  ideal 
patriotism  which  inspired  the  longing  of  Moses  to  tread 
the  soil  of  Canaan  in  the  hour  of  his  death  upon  Mount 
Nebo,  and  which  has  so  often  served  the  Christian  in 
place  of  patriotism  when  contemplating  a  home  for 
which  his  soul  had  yearned,  but  the  soil  of  which  he 
has  never  trodden. 

THE  DEATH  OF  MOSES. 

"  My  Fathers'  hope  !  my  childhood's  dream  ! 
The  promise  from  on  high  ! 
Long  waited  for  !  its  glories  beam 
Now  when  my  death  is  nigh. 

My  death  is  come,  but  not  decay ; 

Nor  eye  nor  mind  is  dim  ; 
The  keenness  of  youth's  vigorous  day 

Thrills  in  each  nerve  and  limb. 

Blest  scene  !  thrice  welcome  after  toil — 

If  no  deceit  I  view  ; 
0  might  my  lips  but  press  the  soil 

Apd  prove  the  vision  true  1 


V 


40  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Its  glorious  heights,  its  wealthy  plains, 

Its  many -tinted  groves. 
They  call !  but  He  my  steps  restrains 

Who  chastens  whom  He  loves. 

Ah  !  now  they  melt  .  .  .  they  are  but  shades  .  . 

I  die  ! — yet  is  no  rest, 
0  Lord  !  in  store,  since  Canaan  fades, 

But  seen,  and  not  possest  ! " 

That  was  written  "  off  Ithaca,"  on  the  30th  December, 
1832.  Newman's  nostalgia  was  more  in  sympathy  with 
that  of  Moses  than  with  that  of  Ulysses ;  the  home  he 
longed  for  was  a  home  he  had  never  yet  gained.  There  is 
something  very  strange  in  the  connection  between  these 
classical  scenes  and  the  thoughts  they  excited  in  the 
travellers,  for  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  most  of  these 
poems  must  have  owed  their  origin  almost  as  much  to 
Froude's  suggestion  as  to  Newman's  pen.  The  lines,  for 
instance,  on  "England,"  in  which  Newman  calls  her  "Tyre 
of  the  West,"  and  accuses  her  of  trusting  in  such  poor 
defences  as  the  fortified  rock  of  Gibraltar,  and  such 
poor  resources  as  her  rich  commerce  supplied,  look  as 
if  they  had  owed  a  good  deal  of  their  inspiration  to 
Froude's  cavalier  contempt  for  the  wealth  earned  by 
trade,  as  well  as  his  scorn  for  any  ostentatious  display 
of  power  not  rooted  in  a  devout  theocratic  faith.  Off 
Zante  Newman  muses  on  "the  Greek  fathers,"  and 
passes  by  "  the  heathen  praise  "  of  Greece,  to  recall  the 
Christian  achievements  of  Clement,  Dionysius,  Origen, 
and  Basil,  Gregory  of  Nazianzen,  and  "royal-hearted 
Athanase,  with  Paul's  own  mantle  blest."  At  Corcyra 
he  cannot  forget  his  Thucydides,  it  is  true,  but  the  turn 
he  gives  to  the  reflections  the  historian  had  suggested 
to  him  directed  his  thoughts  again  to  the  political 
ruthlessness  of  maritime   power,   and    the   individual 


MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE.  41 

responsibility  of  each  member  of  a  nation  for  bis  share 
in  its  fierce  and  cruel  deeds. 

"  I  sat  beneath  an  olive's  branches  gray, 
And  gazed  upon  the  site  of  a  lost  town, 
By  sage  and  poet  chosen  for  renown  ; 
There  dwelt  a  race  that  on  the  sea  held  sway, 
And,  restless  as  its  waters,  forced  a  way 
For  civil  strife  a  thousand  states  to  drown. 
That  multitudinous  stream  we  now  note  down, 
As  though  one  life,  in  birth  and  in  decay. 
Yet,  is  their  being's  history  spent  and  run, 
Whose  spirits  live  in  awful  singleness. 
Each  in  his  self-formed  sphere  of  light  or  gloom  1 
Henceforth,  while  pondering  the  fierce  deeds  then  done, 
Such  reverence  on  me  shall  its  seal  impress. 
As  though  I  corpses  saw,  and  walked  the  tomb." 

There  is  to  me  something  very  striking  in  the 
contrast  between  the  class  of  thoughts  which  the  old 
Greek  and  Roman  localities  suggest  to  a  Whig  poet  like 
Byron,  with  a  broad  dash  of  license  in  his  whiggery,  to 
classical  scholars  like  dough,  imbued  with  what  is  now 
called  "  the  modern  spirit," — as  well  its  moral  earnest- 
ness as  its  intellectual  scepticism, — and  to  grave  spirits 
like  Newman's  and  Hurrell  Froude's,  dominated  not  only 
by  a  religious  but  by  a  strongly-marked  ecclesiastical  bias. 
Hurrell  Froude  writes  from  Rome — "  Rome  is  the  place, 
after  all,  where  there  is  most  to  astonish  one,  and  of  all 
ages,  even  the  present.  I  don't  know  that  I  take  much 
interest  in  the  relics  of  the  empire,  magnificent  as 
they  are,  although  there  is  something  sentimental  in 
seeing  (as  one  literally  may)  the  cows  and  oxen,  *  Roman- 
oque  foro  et  lautis  mugire  carinis.'  But  the  thing 
which  most  takes  possession  of  one's  mind  is  the  entire 
absorption  of  the  old  Roman  splendour  in  an  unthought- 
of  system ;  to  see  their  columns,  the  marbles  and  bronzes 


42  CAEDINAL  NEWMAN. 

which  had  been  brought  together  at  such  an  immense 
cost,  all  diverted  from  their  first  objects,  and  taken  up 
by  Christianity — St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  standing  at  the 
top  of  Trajan's  and  Antonine's  columns,  and  St.  Peter 
buried  in  the  Circus  of  Nero,  with  all  the  splendour  of 
Home  concentrated   in  his  mausoleum."^      The  effect 
of  all  this  on  Newman,  who  at  this  time  had  not  yet  got 
over  his  strong   prepossession  against   the   Church    of 
Rome,  was  rather  to  repel   him   and    drive   him   into 
dwelling  on  the  simplicity  and  modesty  of  the  primitive 
Church,  than  to  pre-engage  his  imagination  for  the  faith 
to  which  he  ultimately  resigned  himself     At  Messina, 
for  instance,  he  complains   of  the  fascination  exerted 
over  his  heart  by  "these  scenes   of  ancient   heathen 
fame/'  and  by  the  associations  which  the  poetry  of  Virgil 
and  Horiice  had  made  so  dear  to  him,  and  reproaches 
himself  that  the  "  shades  of  power  and  those  who  bore  a 
part  in  the  mad  deeds  that  set  the  world  in  flame," 
should   still  charm   his   imagination,  excusing   himself 
on  the  old  plea  "  homo  sum  ;  nihil  humani  a  me  alienum 
puto;"  and  as  a  rule  the  more  striking  the  associations  of 
the  place,  the  more  he  retreats  into   reveries   on  the 
Divine  warnings  which  rebuke  earthly  pride,  and  on 
that  call  to  renounce  their  fondest  dreams  by  which  the 
heroes  of  God's  grace  have  been  distinguished.     Just 
as  before  he  started  on  his  tour  he  had  impressed  upon 
himself,  at  Hurrell  Froude's  Devonshire  home.  Darting- 
ton,  that  he  must  never  indulge  the  enthusiasm  he  was 
capable   of    feeling    for   "  streamlet    bright,   and    soft 
secluded  grove,"  since  he  had  vowed  himself  to  higher 
affections ;  so  in  the  great  scenes  of  classical  antiquity 

1  Froude's  Remains^  vol.  i.  pp.  298,  299. 


MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE.  43 

he  schooled  himself  to  draw  back  with  so  much  the 
sterner  resolution  from  the  natural  associations  of  the 
place,  to  those  Divine  lessons  which  Scripture  contained. 
Two  of  his  finest  poems  on  David  were  written  in  quaran- 
tine at  Malta.  At  Frascati  he  reproaches  himself  for 
feeling  so  keenly  the  temptations  of  the  world  around 
him,  and  hopes  for  the  time  when  he  shall  no  longer 
"  feel  a  secret  joy  that  hell  is  near."  At  Tre  Fontani  he 
thanks  God  that  he  has  been  drawn  on  so  gradually  to 
the  conviction  that  he  must  lead  a  lonely  life  devoted  to 
his  missionary  work;  and  it  is  only  at  Palermo,  after 
his  serious  illness  in  Sicily,  and  while  waiting  impa- 
tiently for  the  means  of  returning  home,  that  he  allows 
himself  to  take  some  comfort  in  visiting  the  Roman 
Catholic  Churches,  and  accepting  their  soothing  in- 
fluence, as  the  gifts  of  a  good  Samaritan  to  a  wounded 
wanderer.     He  exclaims — 

"  0  that  thy  creed  were  sound  ! 

For  thou  dost  soothe  the  heart,  thou  Church  of  Rome, 
By  thy  unwearied  watch  and  varied  round 

Of  service,  in  thy  Saviour's  holy  home. 
I  cannot  walk  the  city's  sultry  streets, 
But  the  wide  porch  invites  to  still  retreats, 

Where  passion's  thirst  is  calmed,and  care's  unthankful  gloom. 

There,  on  a  foreign  shore, 

The  homesick  solitary  finds  a  friend  : 
Thoughts,  prisoned  long  for  lack  of  speech,  outpour 

Their  tears  ;  and  doubts  in  resignation  end.  f 

I  almost  fainted  from  the  long  delay, 
That  tangles  me  within  this  languid  bay, 

When  comes  a  foe,  my  wounds  with  oil  and  wine  to  tend." 

So  that  the  Church  of  Rome,  though  doing  for  him 
the  office  of  the  good  Samaritan,  is  still  to  him  "  a  foe." 
It  is  when  he  is  fairly  on  his  voyage  back  to  under- 
take that  work  which  throughout  his  dangerous  illness   ? 


44  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

he  was  so  deeply  convinced  that  he  had  yet  to  do  in 
England,  as  to  fill  him  with  the  assurance  that  he  should 
not  die,  that  his  most  exquisite  poems  were  written, 
— those  verses  shining  with  the  softest  and  the  whitest 
poetic  lustre,  which  have  fairly  conquered  even  the 
admiration  of  the  severest  Protestant  Churches,  ad- 
dressed to  the  "kindly  light"  which  he  entreated, 
"  amidst  the  encircling  gloom,"  to  lead  him  on ;  and 
the  two  splendid  studies  in  the  style  of  the  tragic  Greek 
chorus,  one  of  which  I  have  given  at  length  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter.  For  grandeur  of  outline,  purity  of  taste, 
and  radiance  of  total  effect,  I  know  hardly  any  short 
poems  in  the  language  that  equal  them. 

As  regards  the  influence  of  this  journey  on  Newman's 
future  career,  it  appears  that  while  in  many  respects 
it  diminished  his  horror  of  Romanism,  in  consequence 
especially  of  the  influence  of  Hurrell  Froude,  it  had 
a  contrary  effect  on  Hurrell  Froude's  own  mind,  and 
later  again,  through  him  to  some  extent  I  suppose, 
on  Newman's.  Hurrell  Froude  writes  from  Naples  on 
the  I7th  February,  1833 — "I  remember  you  told  me 
that  I  should  come  back  a  better  Englishman  than 
I  went  away ;  better  satisfied  not  only  that  our 
Church  is  nearest  in  theory  right,  but  also  that  prac- 
tically, in  spite  of  its  abuses,  it  works  better ;  and 
to  own  the  truth,  your  prophecy  is  already  nearly 
realized.  Certainly  I  have  as  yet  only  seen  the  sur- 
face of  things,  but  what  I  have  seen  does  not  come 
up  to  my  notions  of  propriety.  These  Catholic  countries 
seem  in  an  especial  manner  Karix^^iv  ttjv  aXrjO^Lav  kv 
dbLKLa,  and  the  priesthood  are  themselves  so  sensible 
of  the  hollow  basis  on  which  their  power  rests,  that  they 
dare  not  resist  the  most  atrocious  encroachments  of  the 


MEDITERRANEAN  VOYAGE.  45 

State  upon  their  privileges."  ^  And  after  detailing  the 
abuses  of  the  Roman  Catholic  system  in  Sicily  he  goes 
on,  "  The  Church  of  England  has  fallen  low,  and  will 
probably  be  worse  before  it  is  better ;  but  let  the  Whigs 
do  their  worst,  they  cannot  sink  us  so  deep  as  these 
people  have  allowed  themselves  to  fall,  while  retaining 
all  the  superficials  of  a  religious  country."  ^  When  it 
is  considered  that  this  was  the  impression  of  Eoman 
Catholicism,  judged  by  its  fruits,  which  that  one  of  the 
two  friends  who  was  by  far  the  most  inclined  to  the 
Roman  system  brought  away  from  his  life  in  a  Roman 
Catholic  country,  we  cannot  wonder  that  Newman 
should  have  remained  for  eight  more  years  a  zealous 
Anglican,  before  he  even  began  to  foresee  clearly 
whither  he  was  tending. 

'  Hurrell  Froude's  Bemains,  vol.  i.  p.  293. 
2  Ibid.  p.  294. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

NEWMAN'S  RELATION  TO  THE  TRACTARIAN   MOVEMENT. 

During  the  whole  of  his  Mediterranean  journey 
Newman  was,  as  we  have  seen,  profoundly  impressed 
with  the  conviction  that  he  and  the  band  of  friends 
who  wished  to  restore  the  authority  of  the  Church  of 
England  had  a  great  work  before  them.  In  Rome 
Newman  and  Froude  had  an  interview  with  Monseigneur, 
afterwards  Cardinal,  Wiseman,  and  the  latter  expressed 
a  wish  in  parting  that  they  might  make  a  second  visit  to 
Rome,  to  which  Newman  replied  "  with  great  gravity, 
*We  have  a  work  to  do  in  England.'"  He  adds,  "I 
went  down  at  once  to  Sicily,  and  the  presentiment  grew 
stronger.  I  struck  into  the  middle  of  the  island,  and 
fell  ill  of  a  fever  at  Leonforte.  My  servant  thought 
that  I  should  die,  and  begged  for  my  last  directions. 
I  gave  them  as  he  wished,  but  I  said,  '  I  shall  not  die.' 
I  repeated,  'I  shall  not  die,  for  I  have  not  sinned 
against  light,  I  have  not  sinned  against  light.'  I  have 
never  been  able,"  he  adds  in  the  Apologia,  "to  make 
out  at  all  what  I  meant.  I  got  to  Castra  Giovanni,  and 
was  laid  up  there  for  nearly  three  weeks.  Towards 
the  end  of  May  I  set  off  for  Palermo,  taking  three  days 
for  the  journey.     Before  starting  from  my  inn  on  the 


TRACTARIAN  MOVEMENT.  47 

morning  of  May  26th  or  27th,  I  sat  down  on  my  bed 
and  began  to  sob  bitterly.  My  servant,  who  had  acted 
as  my  nurse,  asked  what  ailed  me.  I  could  only  answer, 
'  I  have  a  work  to  do  in  England.' "  On  the  Sunday  after 
his  arrival  at  home,  namely,  July  14th,  1833,  Mr.  Keble 
preached  the  Assize  sermon  in  the  University  pulpit. 
"  It  was  published,"  says  Newman,  "  under  the  title  of 
National  Apostasi/.  I  have  ever  considered,  and  kept 
the  day  as  the  start  of  the  religious  movement  of  1833." 
It  was  the  forty-fourth  anniversary  of  the  taking  of 
the  Bastille,  which  the  French  people  keep  as  the 
anniversary  of  the  great  Revolution.  The  Tractarian 
movement  was  no  doubt  in  its  tendency  distinctly 
anti-revolutionary,  for  it  not  only  used  "  Liberalism " 
as  the  name  for  its  chief  foe,  identifying,  as  it  then 
did.  Liberalism  with  Latitudinarianism,  but  it  proved  a 
distinctly  clerical  movement,  while  the  Revolutionary 
party  in  France  has  always  regarded  "  clericalism  "  as  a 
foe  even  more  bitter  than  the  Church  of  Rome  herself. 
Now  Tractarianism  was  clerical  to  the  core — more 
clerical,  I  conceive,  in  some  real  sense  than  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  herself.  The  recoil  against  the  world 
which  made  Newman  so  unwilling  to  recall  even  the 
glories  of  pagan  antiquity  when  he  was  abroad,  the 
semi-evangelical,  semi-ascetic  dread  of  any  but  a  con- 
sciously  religious  life,  which  marked  the  poems  and 
tendencies  of  1833,  all  seemed  to  imply  a  somewhat 
rigid  form  of  sacerdotalism.  In  the  very  first  of  the 
Tracts  for  the  Times  which  was  written  by  Newman 
himself  he  asks,  "  On  what  are  we  to  rest  our  authority 
when  the  State  deserts  us  ? "  and  the  answer  given  is, 
"On  our  Apostolical  descent."  Of  course  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  would  give  the  same  answer,  but  there 


48  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

is  a  great  difference  between  the  attitude  of  a  Church 
which  has  always  and  notoriously  rested  on  the  claim 
of  Apostolic  descent,  and  a  Church  which  puts  in  such 
a  claim  at  a  time  when  a  very  considerable  proportion 
of  its  clergy  repudiate  it,  and  when  the  claim  sounds  to 
the  ears  of  most  men  strange  and  paradoxical.  This  was 
so  much  the  case  in  the  Anglican  Church  that  Newman 
tells  a  story  of  one  of  the  bishops,  "  who  on  reading 
an  early  Tract  on  the  Apostolical  Succession  could  not 
make  up  his  mind  whether  he  held  the  doctrine  or 
not."  But  of  course  in  such  a  condition  of  things  the 
claim  for  the  Apostolical  succession  forced  the  party 
which  made  it  into  a  much  more  pronounced  and 
self-conscious,  not  to  say  almost  aggressive  and  even 
pretentious,  type  of  sacerdotalism  than  that  of  a  Church 
wherein  direct  Apostolical  succession  had  been  the 
plainly  and  universally  avowed  basis  of  the  priesthood 
for  nearly  two  thousand  years.  And  Newman's  personal 
attitude  gave  a  great  deal  of  additional  effect  to 
the  ostentatiously  sacerdotal  tone  of  the  party.  "  I 
thought,"  he  says,  "that  the  Apostolical  form  of 
doctrine  was  essential  and  imperative,  and  its  grounds 
of  evidence  impregnable.  Owing  to  this  confidence,  it 
came  to  pass  at  that  time  that  there  was  a  double  aspect 
in  my  bearing  towards  others,  which  it  is  necessary  for 
me  to  enlarge  on.  My  behaviour  had  a  mixture  in  it 
both  of  fierceness  and  of  sport,  and  on  this  account,  I 
dare  say,  it  gave  offence  to  many;  nor  am  I  here 
defending  it."  ^  "I  was  not  unwilling  to  draw  an 
opponent  on  step  by  step  to  the  brink  of  some 
intellectual   abs\irdity,  and   to  leave  him  to  get   back 

*  Apologia,  p.  114. 


^RACTAElAN  MOVEMENT.  49 

as  he  could.  I  was  not  unwilling  to  play  with  a  man 
who  asked  impertinent  questions.  I  think  I  had  in 
my  mouth  the  words  of  the  wise  man,  *  Answer  a  fool 
according  to  his  folly/  especially  if  he  was  prying  or 
spiteful.  I  was  reckless  of  the  gossip  which  was  cir- 
culated about  me,  and  when  I  might  easily  have  set 
it  right,  did  not  deign  to  do  so.  Also  I  used  irony 
in  conversation,  when  matter-of-fact  men  could  not 
see  what  I  meant."  ^  And  then  what  Newman  calls 
his  occasional  "  fierceness "  was  equally  well  calculated 
to  impress  men  with  his  setting  up  a  new  order  of 
things  on  a  definitely  sacerdotal  basis.  "  In  the  very 
first  page  of  the  first  Tract,"  he  tells  us,  "  I  said  of  the 
bishops  that,  '  black  event  though  it  would  be  for  the 
country,  yet  we  could  not  wish  them  a  more  blessed 
termination  of  their  course  than  the  spoiling  of  their 
goods  and  martyrdom.'"^  ''Again,  when  one  of  my 
friends  of  liberal  and  evangelical  opinions  wrote  to 
expostulate  with  me  on  the  course  I  was  taking, 
I  said  that  we  would  ride  over  him  and  his  as 
Othniel  prevailed  over  Chushan  Rishathaim,  King  of 
Mesopotamia.  Again,  I  would  have  no  dealings  with 
my  brother,  and  I  put  my  conduct  upon  a  syllogism. 
I  said,  'St.  Paul  bids  us  avoid  those  who  cause 
divisions;  you  cause  divisions,  therefore  I  must  avoid 
you.'  I  dissuaded  a  lady  from  attending  the  marriage 
of  a  sister  who  had  seceded  from  the  Anglican  Church."  ^ 
All  this  gave  an  impression  that  the  head  of  the 
movement  which  claimed  Apostolical  succession  as  the 
foundation  of  the  order  of  the  Anglican  Church  was 
himself  almost  "fiercely"  sacerdotal.      I  don't  think 

^  Apologia,  p.  115.        2  j^^^  p.  117^        3  jn^^  p  1x8. 

E 


V 


50  CAKDINAL    NEWMAN. 

that  that  ever  was  his  character  at  all.  Indeed,  I 
think  his  was  very  much  the  reverse  of  a  specially 
sacerdotal  character.  Cardinal  Newman  has  always 
been  too  shy  and  too  reserved  a  man,  with  too  individual 
a  nature,  to  care  to  assert  effectively  for  a  caste  the 
sway  it  should  theoretically  exert  over  his  fellow-men. 
Least  of  all  would  he  care  to  exercise  that  sway 
through  the  respect  felt  for  his  position  as  a  priest, 
rather  than  through  the  affection  felt  for  his  person 
as  an  individual.  But  it  is  perfectly  true,  I  think, 
that  he  regarded  an  authoritative  Church  as  at  least 
as  important  an  element  in  revelation  as  a  clearly- 
defined  doctrine,  and  that,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  he 
never  gave  that  pre-eminence  to  the  gradual  unveiling 
of  the  character  of  God  as  the  main  subject-matter  of 
revelation,  which  could  alone,  I  suppose,  hold  sufficiently 
in  check  the  tendency  to  exalt  and  magnify  the  function 
of  the  priesthood. 

Newman  was  always  more  or  less  disposed  to  accept 
Bishop  Butler's  principle,  that  probability  is  the  guide 
of  life  (though,  as  I  have  shown,  he  did  not  think  it 
could  be  applied  to  enforce  the  duty  of  prayer  on 
those  who  only  believed  the  existence  of  God  to  be  a 
highly  probable  hypothesis),  to  a  much  greater  extent 
than  I  should  have  thought  either  safe  or  in  conformity 
with  our  Lord's  teaching,  and  hence  he  attached  a  much 
greater  relative  importance  to  the  institutions  which 
grew  up  under  the  Gospel  as  significant  parts  of  the 
Divine  purpose  of  revelation,  than  they  were  perhaps 
intended  to  bear.  He  thought  as  much,  I  suppose,  of 
the  effect — in  the  direction  of  humility,  for  example — 
which  the  habit  of  confession  and  the  ordinance  of 
absolution  would  produce  on  the  human  character,  as 


TRACTARIAN  MOVEMENT.  61 

he  thou£flit  of  the  ejBfect  in  the  same  direction  which 
the  constant  study  of  Christ's  character  would  produce, 
for  him  and  his  colleagues.  Revelation  meant  not 
merely,  perhaps  not  chiefly,  the  unveiling  of  the  Divine 
character  and  personality,  but  the  totality  of  the 
results  to  be  produced  by  all  the  new  agencies  which 
Christianity  set  in  motion,  and  of  these  of  course  he 
regarded  an  authoritative  Church  as  by  far  the  most 
important.  To  him  the  Church,  instead  of  being  merely 
the  great  organization  which  handed  down  to  future 
generations  the  original  testimony  to  Christ,  and  which 
strove  to  embody  His  teaching  in  actual  practice,  was 
in  the  first  instance  the  depository  of  the  sacraments 
which  Christ  instituted,  and  became  through  their  in- 
strumentality the  only  agency  competent  to  impress 
adequately  on  the  soul  those  regenerate  habits  of  mind 
which  could  alone  make  that  testimony  efi'ectuaL 

Newman  and  his  friends  hold,  if  I  understand  them 
rightly,  that  the  institutions  that  grew  up  in  the  kingdom 
of  God,  which  our  Lord  announced,  counted  for  at  least  as 
much  in  relation  to  the  salvation  of  men  as  the  unveiling 
of  God's  character  itself, — this  kingdom  of  God  being 
another  name  for  the  Church  into  which  the  Apostles 
(and  their  successors)  were  to  have  the  power  of 
admitting  those  who  were  willing  to  submit  to  the 
appropriate  conditions.  But  this  implied  definite  con- 
ditions under  which  alone  valid  sacraments  could  be 
granted  and  received,  and  a  certain  number  of  tradi- 
tional principles  by  which  the  ministers  of  these 
sacraments  must  be  bound.  Questions  relating  to  the 
Church  generally  became,  therefore,  in  the  minds  of 
those  who  held  that  these  sacraments  were  of  the 
first  importance  as'  agents   of  spiritual  life,   not  mere 


52  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

ecclesiastical  questions,  but  questions  of  theology  of  the 
utmost  significance,  questions  of  theology  at  least  as 
weighty  as  the  due  unveiling  of  the  Divine  character 
itself.  Hurrell  Froude,  in  the  remarkable  essay  on 
Rationalism  as  shown  in  the  Interpretation  of  Scriioture, 
which  seems  to  present  the  Tractarian  view  of  the 
Church  and  its  agency  with  singular  clearness,  maintains 
that  Christ,  in  breathing  on  His  Apostles,  gave  them 
the  power  of  transmitting  to  others  the  gift  which  He 
had  bestowed  on  them,  by  prayer  and  the  laying  on  of 
hands ;  that  the  Apostles  did  so  transmit  it  to  others, 
and  they  again  to  others,  and  that  in  this  way  only  it 
has  been  preserved  in  the  world  to  the  present  day. 
This  gift,  it  was  contended,  also  bestows  the  power  to 
admit  into  communion  and  to  exclude  from  it ;  to  bless 
and  intercede  for  those  who  are  in  communion ;  to  bless 
bread  and  wine  so  as  to  create  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ  in  the  same  sense  in  which  our  Lord's  blessing 
made  them  so;  and  "to  enable  delegates  to  perform 
this  great  miracle  by  ordaining  them  with  imposition 
of  hands." 

It  was  frankly  admitted  by  the  leading  Tractarians, — 
and  explicitly  by  both  Newman  and  Froude, — that  there 
is  comparatively  little  explicit  statement  in  the  New 
Testament  on  the  subject  of  these  most  important  terms 
of  cominuaion^and  the  privileges  of  communicants,  and 
that  it  is  somewhat  mysterious  that  there  is  so  little, 
though  they  held  that  what  there  is  on  the  subject  is 
very  impressive,  and  quite  sufficient  to  direct  attention  to 
the  significance  of  the  traditional  teaching  on  this  head. 
Of  course  they  supplemented  the  evidence,  which  they 
regarded  as  so  deficient  in  Scripture,  by  the  teaching 
and  practice  of  the  primitive  Church  in  the  earliest 


TRACTAEIAN  MOVEMENT.  53 

age  in  which  its  teaching  and  practice  are  intimately- 
known  to  us.  And  so  far  as  the  evidence  still  seemed 
more  or  less  inadequate,  they  schooled  themselves  with 
Bishop  Butler's  doctrine,  that  the  Almighty,  in  revealing 
to  us  any  part  of  His  will  in  writing,  has  done  more 
than  we  had  any  reason  to  expect,  and  that  consequently 
He  may  have  left  many  parts  of  it  unrevealed  in  writing, 
for  aught  reason  tells  us  to  the  contrary.  They  argued, 
that  so  soon  as  we  have  clear  evidence  of  the  tendency 
of  God's  will  from  any  one  source,  natural  piety  ought 
to  make  us  eager  to  supplement  our  knowledge  of  it,  so 
far  as  it  is  possible  to  do  so  from  any  other  sufficient 
source  of  knowledge,  just  as  a  son  who  had  certain 
documentary  evidence  of  his  father's  wishes  would,  if 
he  heartily  loved  that  father,  be  eager  to  supplement 
the  knowledge  so  acquired  by  the  oral  testimony  of  any 
credible  witnesses  of  his  father's  death,  who  should  tell 
him  that  he  had  expressed  wishes  to  them  about  him 
which  were  not  embodied  in  the  formal  will.  And 
they  argued,  that  if  a  generously  filial  spirit  would  show 
itself  by  accepting  such  credible  oral  testimony,  then 
it  is  reasonable  for  Christians  to  supplement  the  teach- 
ing of  the  New  Testament  as  to  our  Lord's  purpose 
by  the  evidence  of  the  friends  and  successors  of  the 
Apostles,  as  it  was  embodied  in  the  habits  and  devotions 
of  the  primitive  Church.  Especially  they  insisted  that 
in  the  case  supposed  as  to  the  father's  will,  the  son 
would  be  doubly  eager  to  guide  himself  by  the  oral 
evidence  of  those  who  were  around  the  death-bed,  if 
the  drift  of  these  unwritten  directions  tended  on  the 
whole  to  enforce  on  him  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice, 
for  this  would  increase  the  obligation  on  him  for  cir- 
cumspection, and  abridge  his  right  to  do  as  he  pleased 


54  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

with  the  property.  And  this  was  the  case,  they  con- 
tended, as  regarded  the  traditional  practice  of  the 
primitive  Church  with  regard  to  the  use  and  con- 
ditions of  the  sacraments.  And  they  pressed  Butler's 
use  of  the  doctrine  that  probability  is  the  guide  of  life, 
most  earnestly  when  it  came  to  the  question  as  to  the 
amount  of  evidence.  Even,  they  said,  if  we  can  only 
convince  ourselves  that  there  is  a  slight  presumption 
that  it  was  Christ's  will  that  we  should  govern  our- 
selves by  the  ordinances  and  practices  of  the  primitive 
Church,  we  are  as  much  bound  to  act  upon  that  pre- 
sumption,— supposing,  of  course,  that  there  is  nothing 
contrary  in  it  to  His  known  will, — as  if  we  had  the  fullest 
proof  that  it  was  so.  Indeed,  they  went  further,  and 
urged  that  probably  the  speculative  difficulties  in 
which  the  evidence  of  some  parts  of  religion  is  involved, 
is  a  providential  part  of  some  persons'  trial,  and  the 
only  sort  of  trial  which  would  really  provide  them  with 
the  proper  materials  for  the  discipline  of  their  own  cha- 
racter. Such  people  feel  no  temptation  to  the  ordinary 
sins  of  injustice,  unrestrained  pleasure-seeking,  and  irre- 
ligion,  but  they  need  discipline  for  their  wills  just  as 
much  as  those  who  are  so  tempted,  and  for  them  the 
true  discipline  is  to  act  on  a  presumption  as  to  what 
God's  will  is,  which  they  know  to  be  anything  but 
certain,  and  that  too  with  as  much  earnestness  and 
dutifulness  as  they  would  act  on  it  if  they  had  the  most 
final  evidence  that  it  is  His  will. 

I  insist  upon  this  very  marked  element  in  the  Tract- 
arian  movement,  because  it  distinguished  the  whole 
genius  of  that  movement.  It  gave  the  Tractarians 
the  same  anxious,  and,  as  I  may  call  it,  precautionary 
piety  which   distinguished   the  great   Bishop   Butler's 


TEACTARIAN   MOVEMENT.  55 

type  of  religion,  and  which  is  as  different  from  the  im- 
plicit and  joyous  confidence  which  the  Roman  Catholics 
place  in  their  Church,  as  it  is  from  the  sober  conven- 
tionahsm  of  the  religion  of  the  "  Establishment." 

It  will  be  seen  later,  that  when  Newman  at  last 
made  up  his  mind  to  join  the  Church  of  Rome,  his 
genius  bloomed  out  with  a  force  and  freedom  such  as 
it  never  displayed  in  the  Anglican  communion,  though 
he  belonged  to  that  communion  till  he  was  forty-four 
years  of  age.  And  I  ascribe  a  good  deal  of  its  re- 
pression during  the  twelve  years  between  1883  and 
1845  to  that  habit  of  schooling  himself  to  act  on  as- 
sumptions of  which  there  could  be  no  certitude,  which 
the  Tractarian  party,  conscious  that  it  was  proposing  a 
religious  system  more  or  less  alien  to  the  temper  of 
their  Church,  forced  itself  to  adopt.  The  Tractarians 
lived  more  like  a  colony  of  immigrants  amongst  a 
people  of  different  language  and  customs,  than  like  a 
band  of  patriots  who  w^ere  reviving  the  old  glories  of 
their  native  country.  Indeed,  they  felt  that  they  were 
acting  on  a  hypothesis  which  was  not  only  intrinsically 
doubtful,  but  as  yet  unacclimatized  to  th^  soil  of  English 
Churchmanship,  and  w^hich  did  not  take  very  kindly  to 
that  soil. 

The  following  passage  from  Hurrell  Froude's  essay  on 
Rationalism  as  shoion  in  the  Interpretations  of  Scripture, 
embodies  very  adequately  the  principles  of  the  Tractarian 
movement.  After  admitting  that  the  ancient  belief  of 
the  Church  respecting  the  sacraments  and  the  priest- 
hood *'is  not  forced  upon  us  by  Scripture,"  and  that 
"  the  texts  which  seem  to  imply  it  do  not  necessarily 
imply  it,"  he  goes  on — "  Hence  it  is  inferred  that  they 
certainly  do  not  imply  it ;  that  it  is  not  alluded  to  in 


56  CAEDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Scripture;  and  is  therefore  a  foolish  if  not  criminal 
superstition.  Persons  who  think  in  this  manner  will  do 
well  to  recollect  that  there  are  in  the  Bible  the  follow- 

^  ing  words, — '  Thomas,  because  thou  hast  seen  Me  thou 
hast  believed ;  blessed  are  they  that  have  not  seen  and 
yet  have  believed.'  These  words  do  not  apply  directly 
either  to  the  sacred  elements  or  to  the  priesthood ; 
primarily  they  refer  to  our  Lord's  resurrection,  not  to 
the  institutions  which  were  the  standing  monuments 
of  it ;  yet  they  are  not  the  words  of  one  who  would  be 
exceedingly  displeased  at  our  accepting  even  these  on 
evidence  short  of  demonstration.  'Blessed  are  they 
that  have  not  seen  and  yet  have  believed ' — this  declar- 
ation (humanly  speaking)  is  strangely  unguarded,  if  a 
generous,  unsuspecting  reverence  for  all  that  claims  to 
be  from  Him  is  indeed  so  dangerous  a  temper ;  nor  do  I 
think  that  man's  condition  an  unenviable  one  who  at  the 
last  day  shall  plead  as  validly  for  all  his  errors  as  this 
text  will  plead  for  those  of  a  ready  faith.  If  at  that 
day  it  shall  indeed  prove  true  that  sacerdotal  Benedic- 
tions and  Absolutions,  and  the  mysterious  Consecration 
of  the  Bread  and  Wine,  are  nothing  more  than  many 
a  zealous  Protestant  would  reduce  them  to;  and  the 
reverence  of  those  who  have  bowed  to  them  as  Christ's 
ordinances,  shall  thus  turn  out  to  have  been  superfluous, 
is  it  to  be  thought  that  the  fear  to  reject  what  might 
possibly  be  from  the  Lord,  will  prove  no  excuse  for 
having  accepted  what  was  not  ?  that  the  temper  which 
has  in  these  instances  been  led  astray  by  trusting 
evidence  short  of  demonstration,  will  find  no  grace  in 
His  eyes  who  reproved  the  incredulity  of  Thomas?" 

,  Thus  the  very  core  of  the  Tractarian  movement 
was  a  precautionary  creed   for  which  the  leaders  felt 


TKACTAKIAN  MOVEMENT.  57 

that  the  evidence  was  doubtful,  but  which  they  held 
to  be  more  likely  than  not,  and  in  any  case  to  be  an 
ecclesiastical  "  working  hypothesis "  on  which  it  was 
their  duty  to  act.  This  attitude  of  mind  it  was  that 
tinged  the  whole  Tractarian  movement  with  an  air  of 
anxious  venturesomeness,  of  hesitating  audacity,  of  care- 
worn courage,  which  was  as  foreign  as  possible  to  the 
spirit  of  the  Anglican  Church  in  which  it  originated, 
and  as  different  as  possible  from  the  spirit  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  which  it  found  its  goal. 
That  Newman  himself  adopted  this  tone  as  explicitly 
as  either  Froude  or  any  other  of  the  leaders,  is  demon- 
strable. "  If  we  will  doubt,"  he  wrote  in  Tract  85,  "that 
is,  if  we  will  not  allow  evidence  to  be  sufficient  which 
merely  results  in  a  balance  on  the  side  of  revelation ;  if 
we  will  determine  that  no  evidence  is  enough  to  prove 
revealed  doctrine  but  what  is  overpowering ;  if  we  will 
not  go  by  evidence  in  which  there  are  (so  to  say)  three 
chances  for  revelation  and  only  two  against,  we  cannot  be 
Christians;  we  shall  miss  Christ  either  in  His  inspired 
Scriptures,  or  in  His  doctrines,  or  in  His  ordinances." 
It  is  characteristic  of  the  change  in  Newman's  views, 
that  in  republishing  this  tract  with  all  the  necessary 
retractations  after  his  conversion  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  he  did  not  allow  this  sentence  to  stand  as  it 
stands  here,  even  though  it  was  covered  by  the  necessary 
retractations,  and  altered  it  into  "  a  dozen  chances  for 
revelation  and  only  two  against,"  instead  of  "  three 
chances  for  revelation  and  only  two  against."  In  other 
words,  he  evidently  held  that  even  as  a  Protestant  he 
had  underrated  the  magnitude  of  the  probability  on 
which  he  believed,  and  that  he  had  actually  felt  a  much 
larger  confidence  in  the  truth  of  his  assumption  than 


58  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

his  language  at  the  time  expressed.  And  that  was  no 
doubt  really  the  case.  In  his  extreme  anxiety  not  to 
understate  the  difficulties  with  which  he  was  grappling, 
he  often,  I  think,  in  his  Tractarian  days,  gave  an 
impression  of  a  much  more  doubtful  attitude  of  mind 
than  he  bad  really  been  conscious  of. 

And  this  leads  me  naturally  to  the  charge  which  has 
so  often  been  brought  against  him,  that  with  a  pro- 
foundly sceptical  intellect,  he  forced  upon  himself  a 
belief  which  was  not  only  not  the  true  conclusion  of 
his  unbiased  mind,  but  was  one  which  he  had  im- 
plicitly, though  not  perhaps  with  full  consciousness, 
rejected.  Let  me  add,  however,  that  Newman's  at- 
titude in  the  movement  was  always  far  more  hesitating, 
precautionary,  and  tentative  than  that  of  Ward  and 
the  advanced  party.  But  Mr.  Wilfrid  Ward's  admir- 
able life  of  his  father  has  given  so  powerful  a  sketch 
of  the  tone  of  the  right  wing  of  the  Tractarian  move- 
ment, that  it  is  quite  unnecessary  for  me  to  dwell 
upon  it  at  any  length. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Newman's  alleged  scepticism. 

I  quoted  at  the  opening  of  this  essay  a  passage  in 
which  Professor  Huxley  suggests  that  it  would  be 
easy  to  extract  a  very  effective  "  Primer  of  Infidelity " 
from  Cardinal  Newman's  writings,  especially  from  the 
Essay  on  Ecclesiastical  Miracles^  the  Tract  85  on 
Holy  Scripture  in  Relation  to  the  Catholic  Greedy 
and  the  Essay  on  Develo'pment.  And  I  admit  that 
this  might  be  accomplished;  and  yet  I  no  more  ad- 
mit that  Newman's  mind  is  essentially  sceptical,  than 
I  admit  that  Professor  Huxley's  is  essentially  credulous 
because  it  would  be  possible  by  careful  selection  to  get 
a  good  deal  out  of  his  writings  which  might  furnish  a 
primer  of  fundamental  beliefs.  The  very  passage  by 
which  Professor  Huxley  illustrates  his  remark  will  serve 
admirably  to  show  how  very  empty  of  true  significance 
the  remark  is.  He  says  that  "  there  is  something 
really  impressive  in  the  magnificent  contempt  with 
which  Dr.  Newman  sweeps  aside  alike  those  who  offer 
and  those  who  demand  what  ordinary  men  call  evidence 
for  miracles."  And  in  proof  of  this  he  quotes  the 
following  from  the  Essay  on  Ecclesiastical  Miracles — 

"  Some  infidel  authors  advise  us  to  accept  no  miracles 
which  would  not  have  a  verdict  in  their  favour  in  a  Court 
of  Justice;   that  is,  they  employ  against  Scripture  a 


60  CAEDINAL  NEWMAN. 

weapon  whicli  Protestants  would  confine  to  attacks 
upon  the  Church ;  as  if  moral  and  religious  questions 
required  legal  proofs,  and  evidence  were  the  test  of 
truth."  1  And  Professor  Huxley  goes  on — "'As  if 
evidence  were  the  test  of  truth  ! '  although  the  truth  in 
question  is  the  occurrence  or  non-occurrence  of  certain 
phenomena  at  a  certain  time  or  place.  This  sudden 
revelation  of  the  great  gulf  fixed  between  the  ecclesi- 
astical and  the  scientific  mind,  is  enough  to  take  away 
the  breath  of  one  unfamiliar  with  the  clerical  organ." 
I  should  rather  say  that  this  remark  of  Professor 
Huxley's,  as  coming  from  one  who  professes  familiarity 
with  the  essay  in  question,  is  enough  to  take  away 
the  breath  of  any  one  unfamiliar  with  the  scientific 
organ.  Read  in  its  context,  Dr.  Newman's  observation 
is  not  only  not  startling,  but  is  a  mere  truism. 
The  essayist  had  been  arguing  that  a  fact  may  be, 
and  is  in  multitudes  of  instances,  just  as  true  even 
though  there  be  no  evidence  to  prove  it  true,  as  it 
is  when  it  is  attested  by  the  most  incontrovertible 
evidence.  The  evidence  may  be  our  best  or  even  our 
only  ground  for  believing  it,  but  the  absence  of  such 
evidence  does  not  in  the  least  disprove  the  reality  of 
the  fact,  it  only  deprives  us  of  any  good  reason  for 
believing  the  fact. 

Professor  Huxley  would  be  about  the  last  man, 
I  suppose,  to  maintain  that  evidence  is  really  the 
test  of  truth,  instead  of  being  merely  the  path  by 
which  we  obtain  access  to  the  truth.  There  are 
millions  of  truths  to  which  we  have  as  yet  no  access 
because  we  have  no  evidence  of  them,  but  which  are 

^  Ttvo  Essays  on  Scripture  Miracles  and  on  Ecclesiastical,  by 
John  Henry  Newman.     Second  edition,  p.  231. 


ALLEGED  SCEPTICISM.  61 

nevertheless  just  as  much  truths  as  the  ponderability 
of  the  atmosphere  was  a  truth  for  all  the  centuries 
before  it  was  discovered  that  the  air  had  weight,  or  the 
tendency  of  the  moon  to  fall  towards  the  earth  before 
Newton  discovered  it.  Instead  of  revealing  *' the  great 
gulf  fixed  between  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  scientific 
mind,"  the  words  of  Newman  which  Professor  Huxley 
quotes  are  indefinitely  more  strict  and  scientific  than 
the  very  unscientific  words  in  which  his  scientific 
opponent  criticizes  them.  Indeed,  a  greater  or  more 
careless  bit  of  interpretation  of  a  very  exact  writer 
I  never  read  than  Professor  Huxley's  criticism. 
Newman's  whole  drift  in  the  passage  from  which 
Professor  Huxley  makes  what  he  seems  to  consider 
this  startling  extract,  is  as  plain  as  words  can  make  it. 
He  reminds  his  readers  that  evidence  for  a  class  of 
facts  is  of  two  kinds — the  evidence  that  there  is  such 
a  class  of  facts  in  existence,  and  the  evidence  that  a 
particular  event  belonging  to  that  class  really  took 
place.  He  insists  that  when  evidence  for  the  real 
existence  of  the  class  has  been  satisfactorily  made  out, 
the  strong  antecedent  improbability  against  a  totally 
new  class  of  facts  is  removed,  and  that  it  is  then  reason- 
able to  accept  much  less  convincing  evidence  on  the 
second  head  than  we  ought  to  require  if  we  had  reason 
to  doubt  whether  such  a  class  of  facts  existed  at  all. 
But  even  when  we  are  satisfied  on  that  head,  he  insists 
that  in  reference  to  events  of  this  kind  which  excite 
men's  wonder  and  admiration,  we  ought  *'to  be  pre- 
pared for  fiction  and  exaggeration  in  the  narrative  to  an 
indefinite  extent."^     He  believes  in  all  the  Scripture 

^  Two  Essays  on  Scripture  Miracles  and  on  Ecclesiastical,  by 
John  Henry  Newman.     Second  edition,  p.  229. 


62  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

\  miracles,  because  he  believes  in  "  the  inspiration  of 
',  Scripture  "  as  imposed  upon  us  by  the  same  authority 
'  which  has  given  us  revelation  as  a  whole  ;  but  he  points 
out  that,  apart  from  the  general  principle  of  the  inspir- 
ation of  Scripture,  there  are  very  many  of  the  Scripture 
miracles  in  which  there  would  be  nothing  in  the 
narrative  to  compel  belief.  Of  course  he  maintains, 
with  all  the  apologists,  that  there  are  leading  miracles, 
,  like  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord,  which  are  supported 
I  by  an  overwhelming  amount  of  proof,  at  all  events 
to  all  those  who  begin  with  a  belief  in  God,  and  an 
expectation  therefore  of  some  manifestation  to  men 
of  His  character  and  purposes.  He  holds  with  regard 
to  miracles,  that  only  "  a  few  can  be  exhibited  with 
evidence  of  so  cogent  and  complete  a  character  as  to 
demand  his  [the  student's]  acceptance,"  apart  from  the 
general  principle  of  the  inspiration  of  Scripture,  which 
he  regards  as  covering  all  Scripture  miracles  which  would 
otherwise  be  doubtful ;  while  as  to  the  alleged  miracles 
of  ecclesiastical  history,  "a  great  number  of  them,  as 
far  as  the  evidence  goes,  are  neither  entirely  true  nor 
entirely  false,  but  have  very  various  degrees  of  proba- 
bility viewed  one  with  another;  all  of  them  recommended 
to  his  [the  student's]  devout  attention  by  the  circum- 
stance that  others  of  the  same  family  have  been  proved 
to  be  true,  and  all  prejudiced  by  his  knowledge  that 
so  many  others,  on  the  contrary,  are  certainly  not  true. 
It  will  be  his  wisdom,  then,  not  to  reject  or  scorn 
accounts  of  miracles  where  there  is  a  fair  chance  of 
their  being  true  ;  but  to  allow  himself  to  be  in  suspense, 
to  raise  his  mind  to  Him  of  whom  they  may  possibly 
be  telling,  to  'stand  in  awe  and  sin  not,'  and  to  ask 
for  light,  yet  to  do  no  more ;  not  boldly  to  put  forward 


ALLEGED  SCEPTICISM.  63 

what,  if  it  be  from  God,  yet  has  not  been  put  forward 
by  Him.  What  He  does  in  secret,  we  must  think 
over  in  secret;  what  He  has  openly  showed  in  the 
sight  of  the  heathen,  we  must  pubKsh  abroad,  '  crying 
aloud  avid  sparing  not.'  An  alleged  miracle  is  not 
untrue  because  it  is  unproved ;  nor  is  it  excluded  from 
our  faith  because  it  is  not  admitted  into  our  controversy. 
Some  are  for  our  conviction,  and  these  we  are  to 
'  confess  with  the  mouth '  as  well  as  '  believe  with  the 
heart';  others  are  for  our  comfort  and  encourage- 
ment, and  these  we  are  to  *  keep  and  ponder  them 
in  our  heart,'  without  urging  them  upon  unwilling 
ears."  ^ 

It  seems  to  me  that  nothing  could  be  more  candid 
or  more  reasonable  than  this  statement — granting  Dr. 
Newman  his  general  principle  that  all  Scripture  is 
inspired  as  to  matters  of  fact,  so  that  Scripture  narratives 
of  miracles  stand  on  that  ground,  and  on  that  ground 
alone,  on  a  different  footing  from  all  other  such  narra- 
tives. It  is  irrational  in  the  highest  degree  for  any 
man  who  is  absolutely  convinced  of  the  resurrection  of 
our  Lord  to  ask  for  "  legal "  proofs  of  other  miracles 
of  the  same  class,  and  manifesting  the  same  character; 
just  as  it  would  be  irrational  in  the  highest  degree  for 
any  man  who  knew  a  friend  intimately  to  ask  for  legal 
proofs  that  he  was  innocent  of  an  alleged  crime,  before 
believing  him  to  be  innocent  of  it.  It  may  be  perfectly 
right  in  a  Court  of  law  to  require  legal  proofs  of  guilt, 
and  when  there  are  adequate  legal  proofs  of  guilt  to 
condemn  the  accused  in  the  absence  of  any  legal 
disproof  of  their  validity ;  but  it  is  not  right,  it  is  pure 

^  Tivo   Essays  on   Scripture   Miracles   and   on  Ecclesiastical. 
Second  edition,  pp.  229,  230. 


64  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

folly,  for  those  who  have  far  better  evidence  on  the 
subject  within  their  reach  than  any  Court  of  law  can 
have,  to  allow  their  judgment  to  be  overruled  by  the 
rules  of  a  Court  of  law.  The  strict  rules  of  legal  evidence 
are  very  valuable  for  those  who  have  access  to  no  better 
evidence,  but  they  rely,  and  rely  rightly,  on  evidence 
as  much  below  the  best  to  which  the  select  few  have 
access,  as  it  is  above  the  best  to  which  the  world  in 
general  has  access.  A  man  might  just  as  well  defer 
to  the  rules  of  evidence  accepted  by  a  Court  of  law 
in  relation  to  a  fact  of  which  his  own  memory  and  con- 
science are  (to  him)  the  final  and  conclusive  evidence, 
as  in  relation  to  a  fact  of  which  his  intimate  knowledge 
of  a  friend  gave  him  far  better  assurance  than  any 
evidence  a  Court  of  law  could  collect.  It  is  simply  a 
truism  to  say  that  we  should  be  highly  unreasonable, 
not  specially  reasonable,  creatures,  if  we  always  demanded 
legal  proof  before  giving  our  hearty  belief;  and  I  think 
that  this  applies  even  to  specific  miracles  directly  we 

(  are   satisfied   of  the  existence  of  the  class  of  events 

'  called  miracles,  and  of  the  moral  and  religious  con- 
ditions under  which  the  specific  miracles  are  said  to 
(have  occurred.  If  I  am  convinced,  as  I  heartily  am, 
'of  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord,  to  doubt  that  He  stilled 
the  tempest,  and  raised  the  dead,  when  this  is  related 
of  Him  by  the  same  authorities  and  in  the  same  spirit 
in  which  His  resurrection  is  recorded,  seems  to  me  not 
a  reasonable  but  a  most  unreasonable  kind  of  doubt. 
And  yet  this  is  the  sort  of  doubt  which  Professor  Huxley 
expects  us  to  foster  in  ourselves,  only  on  the  ground  that 

j  there  would  not  be  sufficient  separate  evidence  of  the 
latter  events  if  they  stood  quite  apart,  and  in  no  organic 

j  connection  with  the  first.     However,  I  am  not  arguing 


ALLEGED  SCEPTICISM.  65 

the  question,  except  so  far  as  to  show  how  candid  and 
in  every  sense  reasonable  is  Newman's  mode  of  present- 
ing it,  and  how  utterly  unjust  it  is  to  accuse  him  of 
laying  down  principles  which  place  a  great  gulf  between 
the  ecclesiastical  and  the  scientific  mind.  Professor 
Huxley's  insinuation,  that  it  is  because  miracles  "  may 
or  have  served  a  moral  or  religious  end,"  that  Newman 
encourages  the  belief  in  them  is  absolutely  without  a 
particle  of  foundation.  It  is  not  because  they  may 
serve,  or  have  served,  a  moral  or  religious  end  that  New- 
man regards  them  as  more  or  less  credible ;  but  exclu- 
sively because  they  belong  to  a  class  of  which  the  real 
existence  has  been  proved  by  what  he  considers  irre- 
fragable evidence,  that  he  demands  a  predisposition 
to  accept  them  on  sufficient  external  attestation,  under 
any  circumstances  which  bring  them  fairly  within  the 
conditions  constituting  that  class.  I  suppose  that  if 
no  one  had  ever  heard  of  an  active  volcano,  the  accounts 
received  of  a  great  eruption  such  as  took  place  a  year 
or  two  ago  in  Java  and  Sumatra  would  be  rightly  re- 
ceived at  first  with  extreme  incredulity ;  and  yet  that, 
knowing  what  we  do  of  those  natural  phenomena,  there 
was  no  predisposition  amongst  scientific  men  to  doubt 
the  facts  then  narrated  so  long  as  there  appeared  to 
be  clear  individual  testimony  to  those  facts. 

It  is  just  the  same  with  the  Christian  miracles.  If  the 
greatest  of  these  rests  on  what  Christians  regard  as  over- 
whelming evidence,  the  lesser  miracles  are  looked  upon 
without  any  of  that  preliminary  incredulity  which  we 
should  rightly  feel,  if  no  event  of  the  kind  had  ever  been 
established  to  our  satisfaction.  All  that  Newman  insists 
upon  is,  that  "our  feeling  towards  the  ecclesiastical 
miracles  turns  much  less  on  the  evidence  producible  for 

F 


66  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

them,  than  on  our  view  concerning  their  antecedent  pro- 
babihty.  If  we  think  such  interpositions  of  Providence 
likely,  or  not  unlikely,  there  is  quite  enough  evidence 
existing  to  convince  us  that  they  really  do  occur;  if 
we  think  them  as  unlikely  as  they  appear  to  Douglas, 
Middleton,  and  others,  then  even  evidence  as  great  as 
that  which  is  producible  for  the  miracles  of  Scripture 
would  not  be  too  much,  nay,  perhaps  not  enough,  to 
conquer  an  inveterate,  deep-rooted,  and  as  it  may  bo 
called,  ethical  incredulity."  ^  And  then  he  goes  on  to 
show,  that  those  who  believe  that  there  is  a  special 
Divine  presence  in  the  Church,  are  predisposed  to  expect 
from  that  special  Divine  presence  the  same  kind  of  effects 
as  they  had  expected  from  the  divinity  of  Christ,  and 
had  actually  found  in  the  records  of  His  life.  In  fact, 
the  whole  "gulf"  which  exists,  if  any  exists,  between 
Dr.  Newman  and  Professor  Huxley,  is  described  in  the 
following  sentence  of  the  former  :  "  The  direct  effect  of 
evidence  is  to  create  a  presumption,  according  to  its 
strength,  in  favour  of  the  fact  attested ;  it  does  not  appear 
how  it  can  create  a  presumption  the  other  way!*  That 
is  perfectly  true,  and  is  most  pertinent  where  the  defect 
of  evidence  is  due,  as  in  almost  all  historical  cases,  to 
the  insufficient  investigation  which  took  place  at  the 
time,  or  to  the  loss  of  the  records  of  that  investigation, 
if  there  was  investigation.  But  of  course  it  does  not 
apply  to  contemporary  events  where  good  evidence 
must  usually  have  been  producible,  if  it  existed,  and 
where  it  was  challenged,  but  not  produced.  In  that  case 
the  inadequacy  of  the  evidence  may  amount  to  proof 
that  good  evidence  does  not  exist  at  all,  although  if  the 

1  Two  Essays  on  Scripture  Miracles  and  on  Ecclesiastical,  second 
edition,  pp.  183-4. 


ALLEGED  SCEPTICISM.  67 

alleged  event  had  really  happened,  good  evidence  for  it 
must  have  existed  at  the  time.  But  Newman  is  con- 
fessedly arguing  concerning  the  evidence  of  long  past 
events,  of  which  it  would  be  impossible  to  assert  that 
the  slightness  of  the  testimony  actually  adduced,  fur- 
nished an  indirect  proof  that  there  was  no  better  evidence 
to  give.  It  would  be  extremely  difficult  to  imagine 
much  slighter  evidence  than  that  which  exists  for 
the  Trojan  war  as  a  real  event;  yet  no  one  w^ould  say 
that,  such  as  it  is,  it  is  of  a  kind  to  establish  a  pre- 
sumption unfavourahU  to  the  reality  of  such  a  war. 
So  far  as  it  goes — and  that  is  not  far — it  tends  to  create 
a  presumption  that  there  was  such  a  war.  And  the 
same  may  be  said  for  almost  all  the  evidence,  however 
slight  and  insufficient  it  may  be,  of  which  Newman  is 
speaking.  It  is  only  when  we  know  that  adequate 
evidence  must  have  existed,  if  the  event  happened  at 
all,  and  that  it  was  challenged  and  not  forthcoming, 
that  Newman's  remark  is  untrue.  It  is  not  only  true, 
but  a  truism  in  relation  to  events  of  which  the  records 
are  more  or  less  obliterated. 

Where  then  is  the  trace  of  Newman's  sceptical 
bias?  It  is  impossible  to  furnish  more  abundant 
proof  than  his  writings  contain  of  his  profound  belief, 
first  in  the  supernatural  government  of  the  world  in 
general,  next  in  the  specially  Divine  revelation  granted 
to  the  Jewish  people,  and  lastly  in  the  great  fact  of 
the  incarnation,  and  of  the  foundation  of  a  Church  in 
which  the  same  supernatural  presence  that  was  incarnate 
in  Christ  was  immanent.  He  firmly  believes  that 
these  antecedent  convictions  are  essential  for  any  due 
estimate  of  the  miraculous  element  in  the  history  of 
the  Jewish  and  Christian  Churches  ;  and   though  he 


68  CARDINAL   NEWMAK 

holds  these  convictions  with  all  his  heart,  he  still 
appreciates  with  the  soberest  good  sense  the  character 
of  the  special  evidence,  or  defect  of  evidence,  for  all  the 
alleged  miracles  which  he  examines.  Would  it  have 
furnished  a  better  guarantee  for  Newman's  Christian 
faith  if  he  had  not  sifted  this  special  evidence  with 
the  sobriety  and  discrimination  which  he  has  actually 
displayed,  for  example,  in  reducing  the  alleged  miracle 
of  ''The  Thundering  Legion"  to  its  true  proportions? 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  precisely  that  sobriety  and  dis- 
crimination which  wins  a  certain  respect  for  his  judg- 
ment when  he  expresses  his  belief  as  he  does  in  re- 
lation to  the  well-attested  failure  of  the  Emperor  Julian 
to  rebuild  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  that  there  was 
something  in  the  story  (as  recounted  by  Julian's  own 
friend,  and  as  a  fragment  of  a  letter  from  the  hand  of 
the  Emperor  himself  confirms  it)  of  that  fiery  out- 
break which  prevented  the  rebuilding  of  the  Temple, 
beyond  a  mere  strange  coincidence;  though  of  course 
the  concurrence  of  a  great  outburst  of  natural  forces  with 
the  expression  of  the  Christian  belief  that  the  enter- 
prise would  fail,  is  regarded  as  a  mere  coincidence  by  all 
sceptics.  There  is  nothing  which  so  completely  refutes 
the  theory  of  Newman's  deep-rooted  scepticism  as  the 
clearness  and  candour  with  which  he  discusses  and  sums 
up  the  evidence  for  and  against  mediaeval  miracles. 

After  all,  the  gravamen  of  the  assertion,  that  New- 
man's nature  is  essentially  sceptical,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  heartiness  and  sincerity  with  which  he  accepted  our 
Lord's  teaching,  "  Blessed  are  they  who  have  not 
seen,  and  yet  have  believed;"  in  other  words,  in  his 
belief  that  it  is  the  predisposition  to  find  what  is  Divine 
in  the  world  which  enables  us  to  discern  it  when  it 


ALLEGED  SCEPTICISM.  69 

'  comes  within  our  range  of  experience.  That  is  the 
true  idealist  philosophy,  and  not  only  the  true  idealist 
philosophy,  but  the  true  realist  philosophy  also.  The 
mathematician  finds  in  himself  the  principles  which 
enable  him  to  compute  the  courses  of  the  planets,  and 
the  eclipses  and  occultations  of  the  sun,  moon,  and 
stars;  and  if  he  had  not  had  those  principles  within 
him,  he  would  never  have  been  able  to  declare  what 
had  taken  place  so  many  centuries  before  he  was  born, 
and  what  will  take  place  for  so  many  centuries  after 
he  is  dead.  The  novelist  and  the  dramatist  finds  in 
himself  the  key  to  the  character  of  his  fellow-men,  and 
without  that  key  would  never  be  able  to  create  for  us  so 
much  which  not  only  helps  us  to  understand  our  fellow- 
men,  but  which  positively  adds  to  our  knowledge  of  our 
own  hearts.  And  so,  too,  the  theologian  would  never 
find  anything  but  an  enigma  in  revelation,  if  he  did 
not  use  the  Divine  anticipations  which  prompt  him  from 
within,  to  help  him  to  unriddle  the  traces  of  Divine  agency 
which  he  finds  without.  It  is  no  more  a  disproof  of 
miracles  to  say  that  as  a  rule  they  are  only  believed  to 
happen  by  those  who  have  a  predisposition  to  believe, 
than  it  was  a  disproof  of  the  existence  of  the  American 
continent  to  say  that  it  was  only  discovered  by  a  navi- 
gator who  was  absolutely  prepossessed  with  an  almost 
unreasonably  vehement  conviction  that  it  was  there. 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  Newman  could  have  given  no 
more  conclusive  proof  of  the  depth  of  his  faith  in 
the  Christian  revelation  and  the  divinity  of  the 
ecclesiastical  system,  than  the  boldness  with  which  he 
confronted  the  weak  points  in  the  evidence  for  the 
miracles,  as  well  of  Scripture  as  of  ecclesiastical  history, 
and   demonstrated   that  his  reason  was  as  calm  and 


70  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

unbiased  as  his  spirit  was  devout — nay,  that  in  spite  of 
his  disposition  to  expect  Divine  interpositions  wherever 
he  recognized  an  undoubted  indwelling  of  the  Divine 
presence,  he  was  not  disposed  to  ignore  any  distinct 
evidence  of  exaggeration,  confusion,  and  falsehood  in 
the  records  of  these  alleged  interpositions. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

BALANCING — DEFINING  THE    VIA    MEDIA. 

Newman's  life  at  Oxford  between  1838  and  1843 
was  no  doubt  in  the  main  one  of  eager  ecclesiastical 
propagandism,  but  after  Hurrell  Froude's  death  in  1836 
it  was  certainly  propagandism  of  a  less  confident  kind. 
He  was  deeply  convinced  that  the  Anglican  Church 
had  a  great  work  to  do ;  that  she  had  ignored  her  true 
work ;  that  she  had  gone  to  sleep  at  her  post ;  that  she 
needed  awakening  to  the  duties  she  had  neglected ;  and 
that  if  once  she  could  be  induced  to  claim  her  true 
position,  not  as  an  establishment,  but  as  a  Church,  she 
might  take  a  proud  position  in  the  Church  of  Christ. 
But  in  spite  of  the  ardour,  and  sometimes,  perhaps, 
the  fierceness,  as  he  called  it,  of  his  propagandism, 
especially  while  Hurrell  Froude  was  still  at  his  side, 
the  irony  with  which  he  met  his  foes,  the  enthusiasm 
v/ith  which  he  supported  his  friends,  there  was  probably 
not  a  month  during  the  whole  decade  in  which  he  was 
not  more  or  less  engaged  in  trying  to  define  his  position, 
to  make  out  precisely  what  the  theology  of  his  Church 
really  was,  where  he  was  standing,  whose  the  authority 
was  in  the  name  of  Avhich  he  spoke.  He  was  deeply 
convinced  that,  in  regard  to  the  worship  of  the  Virgin 


72  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

Mary,  and  the  invocation  of  saints,  Rome  was  in  the 
gravest  error.  He  thought  the  Keformers  in  still  graver 
error  in  their  view  of  the  Sacraments.  Yet  he  had 
hard  work  to  pilot  himself  and  his  party  along  that 
"Via  Media"  which  they  wished  to  regard  as  the  true 
theology  midway  between  Rome  and  Protestantism. 
Almost  all  his  books  of  the  period  remind  me  of  the 
soundings  which  are  taken  in  the  supposed  neigh- 
bourhood of  land  when  a  ship  has  run  for  several 
days  by  the  log  alone,  and  has  not  been  able  to  get  the 
altitude  of  the  sun  at  noon.  Then  the  lead  is  cast  every 
two  or  three  minutes,  while  the  cry  of  the  number  of 
fathoms  found  is  anxiously  listened  to  by  the  ship's 
crew  and  passengers. 

I  could  not  go  carefully  through  the  various  publica- 
tions of  this  period  without  prolonging  this  little  book 
to  an  unconscionable  length.  Some  of  them  are  too 
technical  to  interest  general  readers,  and  very  few  of 
them  exhibit  the  rare  literary  power  of  Newman's  later 
works.  But  they  all  show  the  same  conscientious  and 
almost  morbid  desire  to  clear  up  the  theological  position 
of  the  party,  though  generally  without  any  very  satis- 
factory result.  Newman  intended,  he  says,  to  preach  a 
second  and  better  Reformation,  a  return  not  t®  the  six- 
teenth century,  but  to  the  seventeenth,  to  the  theology 
of  Laud.  "No  time  was  to  be  lost,  for  the  Whigs  had 
come  to  do  their  worst,  and  the  rescue  might  come 
too  late.  Bishoprics  were  already  in  course  of  sup- 
pression ;  Church  property  was  in  course  of  confiscation ; 
sees  would  soon  be  receiving  unsuitable  occupants.  We 
knew  enough  to  begin  preaching  upon,  and  there  was 
no  one  else  to  preach.  I  felt  as  on  a  vessel  which 
first  gets  under  weigh,  and  then  clears  out  the  deck, 


DEFINING   THE    VIA   MEDIA.  73 

and  stores  away  luggage  and  live  stock  into  the  proper 
receptacles."  ^ 

At  the  same  time,  from  the  very  first,  amidst  all  the 
hurry  to  preach  Church  principles,  there  was  at  least  an 
equal  amount  of  self-questioning  as  to  what  precisely 
the  new  Church  principles  were  to  be.  How  were  the 
Calvinistic  elements  in  the  Anglican  Church  to  be  dealt 
with,  and  minimized  ?  How  were  the  authorities  of  the 
English  Church  to  be  persuaded  that  they  ought  to  take 
a  much  higher  stand  than  they  had  been  accustomed  to 
take,  both  against  heresy  and  against  the  interference  of 
the  State  ?  How  was  the  Via  Media  to  be  made  so  plain 
and  impressive  that  the  position  of  the  renovated  hier- 
archy should  be  clearly  marked  out,  as  against  both 
Rome  on  the  one  side,  and  the  representatives  of  the 
Reformers  and  the  Erastians  on  the  other  ?  In  a  w^ord, 
though  the  movement  went  on  merrily  enough,  Newman 
was  constantly  going  through  the  process  which  the 
Germans  call  Orientirung — determining  the  true  position 
of  the  new  party,  its  precise  latitude  and  longitude,  so 
that  it  should  be  in  no  danger  of  being  confounded 
with  either  Romanism  or  Protestantism. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable,  and  certainly  I  think 
the  most  fascinating  of  all  his  efforts  in  this  way,  was 
the  Lechtrcs  on  the  Frophctical  Office  of  the  Chttrch  vieiued 
relatively  to  Romanism  and  Fo-pular  Protestantism,  pub- 
lished in  1837,  and  since  republished  in  the  volumes 
entitled  The  Via  Media. 

It  is  an  extremely  characteristic  as  well  as  an  ex- 
tremely subtle  effort  to  discriminate  the  true  view  as 
to  the  use  and  abuse  of  private  judgment,  as  to  the 

^  Apologia,  p.  113. 


74  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

"^  authority  of  the  Church,  and  as  to  the  authority  of 
:  antiquity,  and  to  discriminate  these  as  well  from  the 
Roman  Catholic  view  on  the  one  side,  as  from  the 
ordinary  Protestant  view  on  the  other.  He  tells  us 
quite  frankly,  that  there  are  ''  conscientious  and  sensible 
men,"  who  do  not  approve  of  the  attempt  he  is  making 
at  all,  on  the  ground  that  "  though  the  views  which  may 
be  put  forward  be  in  themselves  innocent  or  true,  yet 
under  our  circumstances  they  all  lead  to  Rome,  if  only 
because  tiie  mind  when  once  set  in  motion  in  any  direction 
finds  it  difficult  to  stop  ;  and  again,  because  the  article  of 
*  the  Church '  has  been  accidentally  the  badge  and  index 
of  that  system."  ^  As  it  turned  out,  these  "  conscien- 
tious and  sensible  men  "  showed  themselves  to  be  shrewd 
prophets.  They  knew  how  unlikely  it  was  that  such  a 
Church  as  the  Church  of  England,  which  was  a  political 
compromise  between  opposite  tendencies  from  the  day 
of  its  separation  from  Rome,  could  successfully  assert 
for  herself  anything  like  a  strong  ecclesiastical  independ- 
ence, and  what  an  advantage  such  a  Church  as  the 
Church  of  Rome  would  have  in  competing  with  the 
Church  of  England  for  the  guidance  of  minds  which 
asked  for  a  visible  authority  rather  than  for  mere 
spiritual  persuasiveness.  Newman  with  his  usual 
keenness  saw  the  difficulties  of  his  position  better  than 
he  saw  the  way  of  surmounting  them. 

"Protestantism  and  Popery,"  he  said  in  his  Intro- 
ductory Lecture,  "  are  real  religions ;  no  one  can  doubt 
about  them ;  they  have  furnished  the  mould  in  which 
nations  have  been  cast ;  but  the  Via  Media,  viewed  as 
an  integral  system,  has  never  had  existence  except  on 

1  Via  Mediaf  vol.  i.  p.  8. 


DEFINING  THE   VIA  MEDIA.  75 

paper ;  it  is  known  not  positively  but  negatively,  in  its 
differences  from  the  rival  creeds,  not  in  its  own  properties; 
and  can  only  be  described  as  a  third  system,  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other,  but  with  something  of  each, 
cutting  between  them,  and,  as  if  with  a  critical  fastidi- 
ousness, trifling  with  them  both,  and  boasting  to  be 
nearer  antiquity  than  either.  What  is  this  but  to 
fancy  a  road  over  mountains  and  rivers  which  has 
never  been  cut  ?  When  we  profess  our  Via  Media 
as  the  very  truth  of  the  apostles,  we  seem  to  by- 
standers to  be  mere  antiquarians  or  pedants,  amusing 
ourselves  with  illusions  or  learned  subtleties,  and  unable 
to  grapple  with  things  as  they  are."  ^  Nevertheless,  so 
profound  was  Newman's  conviction  that  Romanism  and 
popular  Protestantism  were  both  astray,  that  he  was 
convinced  that  he  should  succeed  in  virtually  making 
this  "  road  over  mountains  and  rivers,"  which  hitherto 
had  never  been  cut.  It  was  a  gallant  enterprise,  but  one 
that,  for  all  practical  purposes,  failed.  The  road  was 
never  made,  though  a  track  was  marked  out  over  the 
mountains,  and  fords  were  found  across  the  rivers,  practic- 
able for  a  few  adventurous  men,  and  which  are  used  by 
a  certain  number  of  stragglers  even  to  the  present  day. 
One  of  the  best  parts  of  the  book  was  Newman's 
attack  on  that  notion  that  it  is  a  great  privilege  to 
judge  for  oneself  on  subjects  on  which  one  has  no  means 
of  judging  wisely  for  Oneself — a  privilege  to  which 
Englishmen  assuredly  cling  tenaciously.  He  insists 
with  great  force,  that  to  treat  it  as  a  mighty  privilege 
that  you  should  set  out  in  life  without  any  guidance  f 
is  absurd  in  any  field  of  thought  and  knowledge;  but 

1  Via  Media,  vol.  i.  pp.  16,  17. 


76  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

if  absurd  in  every  other  field,  it  is  most  absurd  of  all 
in  the  field  of  revelation,  where  it  is  so  difficult  to 
apprehend  clearly  the  true  proportions  of  things,  and 
so  easy  to  exaggerate  one  aspect  of  the  Divine  teaching 
and  to  ignore  or  even  suppress  another.  In  main- 
taining his  Via  Media  as  to  the  function  of  private 
judgment,  and  maintaining  that  it  took  an  intermediate 
course  between  trusting  absolutely  to  the  authority  of 
a  Church  which  settles  everything  by  its  fiat,  and  the 
ultra-Protestant  principle  which  pretends  that  every 
Christian  should  be  able  to  make  out  from  his  Bible 
alone  what  has  been  revealed,  Newman  asserts  thatto  use 
private  judgment  properly  you  must  hegin  with  the  habit 
of  obedience  to  those  who  have  "  natural  authority  "  over 
you,  no  matter  who  they  are  ;  and  must  cultivate  a  teach- 
able temper  before  you  dare  to  cavil  and  scrutinize. 
The  very  best  sort  of  investigation,  he  maintains,  is 
conducted  half  unconsciously,  without  any  pride  in  it, 
and  without  any  fuss  about  it.  People  who  boast  of 
their  exercise  of  the  right  of  private  judgment  seldom 
exercise  it  in  the  right  spirit,  which  cannot  be  one  of 
ostentatious  satisfaction  at  the  use  of  such  a  liberty, 
since  it  should  be  one  of  eagerness  to  get  at  the  truth, 
while  eagerness  to  get  at  the  truth  implies  eagerness 
to  avail  yourself  of  any  help  that  will  really  serve  your 
purpose — in  other  words,  implies  eagerness  to  give  up 
your  liberty  to  an  experienced  and  honest  guide.  Those 
who  say  to  themselves,  "  I  am  examining,  I  am  scru- 
tinizing, I  am  judging,  I  am  free  to  choose  or  reject,  I 
am  exercising  the  right  of  Private  Judgment,"  are 
indulging  in  a  very  strange  kind  of  satisfaction,  like  the 
satisfaction  of  a  person  who  exults  in  his  grief  for  a 
friend,  and  says,  "  I  am  weeping ;  I  am  overcome  and 


DEFINING  THE    VIA  MEDIA.  77 

agonized  for  the  second  or  third  time ;  I  am  resolved 
to  weep."  ^  A  person  who  said  that  would  not  be 
credited  with  feeling  very  deeply ;  and  it  is  an  equally 
strange  infatuation,  in  Newman's  mind,  to  boast  of 
being  without  an  opinion,  and  of  being  determined  to 
find  the  truth  without  aid.  "  Who  would  boast,"  he 
asks,  "that  he  was  without  worldly  means,  and  had 
to  get  them  as  he  could  ?  Is  heavenly  treasure  less 
precious  than  earthly?  Is  it  anything  inspiring  or 
consolatory  to  consider,  as  such  persons  do,  that 
Almighty  God  has  left  them  entirely  to  their  own 
efforts,  has  failed  to  interpret  their  wants,  has  let  them 
lose  in  ignorance  at  least  a  considerable  part  of  their 
short  life,  and  their  tenderest  and  most  malleable  years  ? 
Is  it  a  hardship  or  a  yoke,  on  the  contrary,  to  be  told 
that  what,  in  the  order  of  Providence,  is  put  before  them 
to  believe,  whether  absolutely  true  or  not,  is  in  such 
sense  from  Him,  that  it  will  inspire  their  hearts  to  obey 
it,  and  will  convey  to  them  many  truths  which  they 
otherwise  could  not  know,  and  prepare  them  perhaps 
for  the  comunication  of  higher  and  clearer  views  ?  "  ^  In 
short,  private  judgment,  according  to  Newman,  is  at  its 
best  when  it  is  working  half  unconsciously  to  realize 
the  full  meaning  of  what  has  been  impressed  upon  it,  and 
is  not  so  much  the  attitude  of  a  mind  sitting  in  judgment, 
as  of  a  mind  striving  earnestly  to  apprehend  and  piece 
together  the  lessons  it  has  learned  from  many  different 
quarters,  without  asserting  any  arbitrary  liberty  or 
-;  falling  into  any  defiant  attitude.  Reverence  and 
;  humility  are,  in  Newman's  view,  the  just  conditions  of 
I  the  right  exercise  of  private  judgment,  and  you  cannot 

1  Via  Media,  vol.  i.  p.  137.  ^  j^i^i^  yoi.  i  p^  137, 


78  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

have  these  conditions  for  forming  your  judgment  under 
the  most  favourable  form  without  a  Church  that  has 
authority,  but  does  not  overstrain  that  authority.  "  If 
Scripture-reading,"  he  says,  "  lias  in  England  been  the 
cause  of  schism,  it  is  because  we  are  deprived  of  the 
power  of  excommunicating,  which  in  the  revealed 
scheme  is  the  formal  antagonist  and  curb  of  Private 
Judgment."  ^  Rome,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not  suffi- 
ciently train  the  members  of  her  communion  to  com- 
pare the  Scriptures  with  her  teaching,  but  imposes  her 
teaching  on  them  too  absolutely  as  that  of  an  infallible 
Church,  which  may  dictate  without  any  attempt  to 
elicit  and  secure  her  children's  individual  apprehension 
and  assent.  Newman  charges  Rome  with  being  too 
intellectual,  too  systematic  in  the  theology  she  imposes. 
Rome  professes  to  take  a  complete  survey  and  make  a 
complete  map  of  the  region  of  Divine  mysteries,  and  so 
falls  into  the  same  error  as  the  Scotch  Presbyterianism, 
for  instance,  which,  from  a  very  different  point  of  view, 
commits  the  same  fault. 

"  When  religion  is  reduced  in  all  its  parts  to  a  system, 
there  is  hazard  of  something  earthly  being  made  the 
chief  object  of  our  contemplation  instead  of  our  Maker. 
Now  Rome  classifies  our  duties  and  their  reward,  the 
things  to  believe,  the  things  to  do,  the  modes  of  pleasing 
God,  the  penalties  and  the  remedies  of  sin,  with  such 
exactness  that  an  individual  knows  (so  to  speak)  just 
where  he  is  upon  his  journey  heavenward,  how  far  he  has 
got,  how  much  he  has  to  pass ;  and  his  duties  become  a 
matter  of  calculation."  ^  Now  the  Via  Media  between 
the  absoluteness  of  the  Roman  Church  and  the  self- 

^  Via  Media,  vol.  i.  p.  140. 

2    ]^yl^   p,    102. 


DEFINING  THE    VIA  MEDIA.  79 

will  of  many  of  the  Protestant  sects,  which  sometimes 
results  in  a  system  as  definite  and  sharply  defined,  is 
the  comparatively  gentle  authority  of  a  Church  which 
elicits  and  even  cultivates  the  spirit  of  freedom  in 
its  children,  but  curbs  it  and  will  not  allow  it  to  go 
beyond  a  certain  point  in  asserting  either  freedom  of 
opinion  or  freedom  of  practice.  Newman  held  that 
the  infallibility  w^hich  Rome  claims  not  only  makes  her 
arrogant  towards  the  private  judgment  of  her  children, 
but  also  encourages  an  arrogance  in  her  dealings  with 
"  the  deposit  of  truth  "  committed  to  her,  and  with  the 
earliest  traditions  of  the  Church,  that  leads  to  virtual 
indifference  to  the  authority  of  antiquity,  and  in  fact 
to  a  breach  with  its  traditions.  And  this  he  held  that 
Rome  had  done  in  relation  to  the  doctrine  both  of  Pur- 
gatory and  Indulgences,  as  well  as  in  relation  to  the 
doctrine  of  Infallibility  itself  He  accused  the  Church 
of  Rome  of  hardly  even  affecting  to  produce  a  formal 
proof  of  her  infallibility,  the  dogma  being  "  serviceable 
in  practice  though  extravagant  in  theory."  He  thought 
the  Roman  claim  of  infallibility  to  be  rather  like  the 
political  maxim  that  *'the  king  can  do  no  wrong," 
"  which  vividly  expresses  some  great  and  necessary 
principle,"  ^  though  not  of  course  attempting  any  argu- 
mentative proof.  "A  teacher  who  claims  infallibility  is 
readily  believed  on  his  simple  word."  The  Roman 
Church,  he  thought,  rids  herself  of  competition  by  fore- 
stalling it.  "  And  probably  in  the  eyes  of  her  children 
this  is  not  the  least  persuasive  argument  for  her  in- 
fallibility, that  she  alone  of  all  Churches  dares  claim 
it,  as  if  a   secret  instinct  and   involuntary  misgivings 

*  Via  Media,  vol.  i.  p.  117. 


80  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

restrained  those  rival  communions  which  go  so  far 
towards  affecting  it."i 

In  the  preface  to  the  third  edition  of  this  book, 
published  after  Newman  became  a  Roman  Catholic, 
and  in  the  notes  appended  to  the  Anti-Romanist 
portion  of  this  volume,  Newman  of  course  retracts  what 
he  had  said  of  the  arrogance  and  presumption  of  the 
Roman  Church,  and  intimates  that  he  had  spoken 
rather  because  he  had  confidence  in  the  Anglican 
divines  of  the  seventeenth  century,  whom  he  followed 
in  making  these  statements,  than  because  he  had 
verified  for  himself  all  their  charges  against  Rome. 
These  charges  were  necessary,  he  says,  to  the  position 
of  the  Anglican  Church ;  and  though  he  believed  them 
to  be  true,  he  believed  them  rather  on  tradition  than 
on  liis  own  knowledge.  He  had  but  partially  examined 
the  controversy,  but  he  accepted,  as  he  was  bound  to 
do,  the  authority  of  the  divines  of  his  own  Church 
on  its  merits.  In  fact,  he  had  acted  on  his  own 
principle  in  relation  to  private  judgment,  he  had  ac- 
cepted the  bias  of  those  whom  he  regarded  as  his 
proper  teachers,  and  had  only  partially  verified  their 
statements  for  himself. 

It  is  sometimes  intimated  that  this  assumption  of 
the  truth  of  charges  which  Newman  had  not  fully 
examined  savoured  of  that  tone  of  mind  which  implies 
not  so  much  a  profound  conviction  that  a  creed  is  true, 
as  a  willing  assent  to  its  truth,  of  which  the  Roman 
Catholics  are  specially  accused.  And  if  it  be  a  fitting 
subject  for  accusation,  I  think  it  is  a  just  accusation; 
but  I  doubt  whether  it  is  a  fitting  subject  for  it  at  all. 

1  Via  Media,  p.  117. 


DEFINING  THE   VIA  MEDIA.  8l 

If  any  man  examines  his  real  creed  on  any  subject  what- 
ever, rehgious,  moral,  political,  or  psychological,  he  will 
find  that  there  are  in  it  a  few  articles  of  deep  personal 
conviction,  on  which  he  may  be  truly  said  to  be  one  of 
those  adherents  who  help  to  diffuse  them,  but  a  great 
many  articles  which  he  accepts  only  because  they  have 
usually  been  held  in  connection  with  those  on  which  his 
own  conviction  is  earnest,  and  are  held  by  those  for  whose 
general  tone  of  mind  he  feels  a  deep  respect,  and  from 
intercourse  with  whom  he  has  learned  the  greater  part 
of  his  own  religious  or  moral  or  political  or  psycho- 
logical creed. 

For  instance,  Newman  believed  with  all  his  heart,  as 
an  article  of  deep  personal  conviction,  that  an  organized 
Church  was  necessary  both  to  interpret  Scripture 
and  to  administer  the  Sacraments  ordained  by  our 
Lord,  but  he  accepted  almost  passively  as  a  part  of 
the  creed  of  those  Anglican  divines  who  had  inspired 
him  with  this  conviction,  the  opinion  that  Purgatory 
and  the  Invocation  of  Saints  are  not  only  non-scriptural 
but  non-primitive,  and  cannot  be  identified  as  beliefs 
of  the  early  Church  at  all ;  and  again,  that  Rome,  relying 
on  her  own  assumed  infallibility,  had  early  become 
quite  careless  as  to  the  origin  of  her  traditions,  and 
had  allowed  herself  to  sanction  beliefs  which  she  could 
not  trace  back  to  the  times  of  the  Apostles,  or  even 
of  the  apostolic  fathers.  He  knew  enough  to  know 
that  nothing  could  be  more  plausible  than  such  a 
position.  He  did  not  know  enough  to  be  sure  that  he 
should  always  hold  it  on  the  strength  of  the  historical 
evidence  alone ;  but  if  he  is  to  be  very  seriously  blamed 
for  advancing  it,  as  all  his  Anglican  predecessors  had 
advanced  it,  I  think  there  is  hardly  a  controversialist 

G 


82  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

in  the  world  who  will  not  be  liable  to  blame  of  the 
same  kind.  I  suppose  the  truth  to  be,  that  there  is  no 
Scriptural  evidence  worthy  of  the  name,  and  but  little 
evidence  in  the  records  of  the  primitive  Church,  for 
the  doctrines  and  practices  which  Newman  and  the 
great  Anglican  divines  of  the  seventeenth  century  con- 
demned as  Romanizing  innovations  on  the  doctrines 
and  practices  of  the  Apostolic  Church,  but  that  there 
is  enough  trace  of  them  in  comparatively  early  writings 
to  convince  those  who  are  otherwise  assured  of  the 
need  of  a  single  authority  to  determine  controversy, 
that  the  Romanists  have  a  fair  case  for  asserting  that 
these  traditions  have  a  root  in  the  early  past. 

These  are  points  on  which  it  is  quite  easy  for  those  who 
cannot  believe  in  an  infallible  Church  to  feel  assured  that 
the  soi-disant  infallible  Church  has  used  her  assumed 
infallibility  to  add  to  the  faith  of  the  Apostles ;  while 
it  is  equally  easy  for  those  who  cannot  believe  that  any 
Church  whose  authority  on  any  matter  of  creed  is  less 
than  absolute,  is  a  Church  worthy  of  the  name,  to 
accept  as  sufficient  evidence  of  an  undeveloped  germ 
of  doctrine  or  usage  what  those  whose  attitude  of  mind 
was  different  would  regard  as  evidence  utterly  unworthy 
of  serious  notice.  Newman's  craving  for  a  final  human 
authority  on  matters  of  dogma  made  rapid  strides  be- 
tween 1837,  when  these  lectures  on  the  Roman  and 
Protestant  controversy  were  written,  and  1845,  when  he 
joined  the  Church  of  Rome.  It  is  very  natural,  and 
not,  I  think,  a  matter  for  censure,  that  his  estimate 
of  the  evidence  for  the  primitiveness  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  creed  changed  to  some  extent  as  his  sense  of 
the  necessity  for  some  final  tribunal  in  these  matters 
steadily  grew.  ~ 


DEFINING  THE    VIA  MEDIA.  83 

A  very  much  less  interesting  book  than  The  Fro- 
phetical  Office  of  the  Church  was  the  Lectures  on 
Justification  hy  Faith,  published  in  1838,  which  I  con- 
fess I  have  found  somewhat  straw- chopping  and  dry. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  show  that,  while  the  Roman  theology 
is  rio^ht  in  makino^  sanctification  the  substance  of 
justification,  the  Lutheran  and  Anglican  theology  is 
yet  right  in  making  justification  (by  which  Newman 
means  not  maldng  man  just,  but  accounting  him  just) 
the  initial  stage,  and  sanctification  only  the  necessary 
consequence  of  justification.  It  is,  I  think,  very 
difficult  for  a  layman  of  this  generation  to  enter  into 
the  interest  of  this  controversy  at  all.  Even  laymen 
can  fully  understand  the  magic  of  faith,  how  new  and 
how  potent  a  motive  is  furnished  to  man's  life  the 
moment  they  can  discern  a  really  Divine  nature  in 
which  they  may  implicitly  trust  for  the  guidance  of 
their  hearts  and  wills.  But  none  the  less  they  often 
find  it  both  difficult  and  unprofitable  to  enter  into 
the  finer  distinctions  which  St.  Paul  has  been  supposed 
to  draw  between  the  various  stages  of  the  Divine 
change,  and  especially  the  "  imputation "  of  righteous- 
ness, or  "  accounting  righteous,"  which,  according  to 
Lutheran  divines,  precedes  the  nutking  righteous.  All 
they  know  is  that  faith  is  a  renovating  principle  in  the 
highest  sense;  but  it  does  not  seem  to  them  of  the 
highest  moment  to  discern  whether,  between  the  gift 
of  faith  and  the  resulting  spiritual  renovation,  there  is 
or  is  not  wedged  in  this  somewhat  unreal  and,  as  it 
seems,  at  first  sight  at  all  events,  fictitious  declaration, 
that  they  are  already  accounted  in  the  sight  of  God 
what  they  only  hope  to  become.  Newman  says,  with 
what    seems    unanswerable    force,   in   these    lectures, 


84  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

"  Strange  it  is,  but  such  is  the  opinion  of  one  of  the 
two  schools  of  divinity  which  have  all  along  been 
mentioned,  that  God's  calling  us  righteous  implies  not 
only  that  we  have  not  been,  but  that  we  never  shall  be 
righteous.  Surely  it  is  a  strange  paradox  to  say  that 
a  thing  is  not,  because  He  says  it  is ;  that  the  solemn 
averment  of  the  living  and  true  God  is  inconsistent 
with  the  fact  averred ;  that  His  accepting  our  obedience 
is  a  bar  to  His  making  it  acceptable  ;  and  that  the  glory 
of  His  pronouncing  lis  righteous  lies  in  His  leaving 
us  mirighteous."  ^  Strange  indeed,  and  more  than 
incredible,  intolerable  to  piety.  But  even  Newman's 
own  statement  of  the  case,  though  not  open  to  the 
charge  of  being  so  intolerably  paradoxical  as  this 
horrible  doctrine,  is  to  my  mind  full  of  difficulty. 
"  Justification,"  he  says,  "  is  '  the  glorious  voice  of  the 
Lord'  declaring  us  to  be  righteous.  That  it  is  a 
declaration,  not  a  making,  is  sufficiently  clear  from  this 
one  argument,  that  it  is  the  justification  of  a  sinner, 
of  one  who  has  been  a  sinner;  and  the  past  cannot  be 
reversed  except  by  accotinting  it  reversed.  Nothing 
can  bring  back  time  bygone;  nothing  can  undo  what 
is  done.  God  treats  us  as  if  that  had  not  been  which 
has  been;  that  is,  by  a  merciful  economy  or  repre- 
sentation, He  says  of  us  as  to  the  past,  what  in  fact  is 
otherwise  than  what  He  says  it  is.  It  is  true  that 
justification  extends  to  the  present  as  well  as  to  the 
past;  yet  if  so,  still  in  spite  of  this  it  must  mean  an 
imputation  or  declaration,  or  it  would  cease  to  have 
respect  to  the  past.  And  if  it  once  be  granted  to  mean 
an  imputation,  it   cannot   mean  anything   else,  for  it 

^  Lectures  on  tJie  Doctrine  of  Justification,  3rd  edition,  p.  78. 


DEFINING  THE   VIA  MEDIA.  85 

Ccannot  have  two  meanings  at  once.     To  account  and  to 
make  are  perfectly  distinct  ideas.     The  subject-matter 
may  be  double,  but  the  act  of  justification  is  one ;  what 
it  is  as  to  the  past,  such  must  it  be  as  to  the  present ; 
it  is  a  declaration  about  the  past,  it  is  a  declaration 
about  the  present."  ^    And  then  he  goes  on  to  illustrate 
his  meaning  thus  :  "  In  the  fourth  chapter  of  his  Epistle 
to  the  Romans  St.  Paul  makes  justification  synonymous 
with    ^imputing    righteousness/   and    quotes    David's 
words    concerning    the    blessedness    of    those    'whose 
iniquities  are  forgiven,  and  whose  sins  are  covered,'  and 
*  to  whom  the  Lord  will  not  impute  sin.'    Righteousness 
then  is  the  name,  character,  or  estimation  of  righteous- 
ness vouchsafed  to  the  past,  and  extending  from  the 
past  to  the  present,  as  far  as  the  present  is  affected  by 
the  past.     It  is  the  accounting  a  person  not  to  have 
that    present   guilt,    peril,   odiousness,   ill-repute   with 
which  the  past  actually  burdens  him.     If  a  wrong  has 
been  done  you,  and  you  forgive  the  offender,  you  count 
it  as  though  it  had  not  been,  you  pass  it  over.     You 
view  him  as  before  he  did  it,  and  treat  him  as  on  his 
oriojinal  footinfj^.     You  consider  him  to  have  been  what 
he  has  not  been,  fair  and  friendly  towards  you ;  that  is, 
you  impute  righteousness  to  him  or  justify  him.    When 
a  parent  forgives  a  child,  it  is  on  the  same  principle. 
He  says,  '  I  will  think  no  more  of  it  this  time ;  I  will 
forget  what  has  happened;  I  will  give  you  one  more 
trial'     In  this  sense  it  is  all  one  to  say  that  he  forgives 
the  child,  or  that  he  counts  him  to  have  been  and  to 
be  a  good  child,  and  treats  him  as  if  he  had  not  been 
disobedient.      He   declares   him   dutiful,   and    thereby 

1  Jjectures  on  Justification,  p.  67..  -    *•.  . 


(^ 


ow 


86  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

indirectly  forgives  that  past  self  which  lives  in  his 
present  self  and  makes  him  a  debtor."  But  the 
illustration  seems  to  me  to  tell  entirely  against  the 
doctrine  that  imputation  is  a  sort  of  legal  fiction.  The 
father  forgives  the  child  in  the  confidence  that  by 
relying  on  the  child's  better  self,  and  showing  him  that 
he  trusts  that  better  self,  he  will  fortify  and  strengthen 
the  better  self  against  the  worse.  Neither  the  child 
nor  the  father  supposes  for  a  moment  that  the  recol- 
lection of  the  act  of  disobedience  is  really  blotted  out, 
or  that  there  is  any  fictitious  hypothesis  in  the  case. 
The  child  knows  that  the  first  disobedience  is  not  to 
be  brought  up  against  him  so  long  as  he  acts  on 
the  higher  spirit  which  has  regained  the  victory,  and 
that  simply  for  the  reason  that  the  father's  renewed 
trust  is  itself  a  renovating  power,  and  far  more  potent 
than  the  principle  of  fear.  And  that  is,  I  suppose, 
what  is  meant  in  the  32nd  Psalm  by  the  Lord's  not 
imputing  iniquity,  for  the  passage  runs :  "  Blessed  is 
he  whose  transgression  is  forgiven,  whose  sin  is  covered. 
Blessed  is  the  man  unto  whom  the  Lord  imputeth  not 
iniquity,  and  in  whose  spirit  there  is  no  guile  ;  "  in  other 
words,  who  is  really  purified  from  evil  by  the  trust 
which  God  places  in  him.  It  does  not  seem  to  me 
that  there  is  any  trace  here  of  a  legal  fiction  at  all. 
The  reason  God  does  not  impute  iniquity  is  because 
He  sees  the  change  of  heart  which  grace  and  faith 
have  made,  because  He  sees  that  at  last  "  in  his  spirit 
there  is  no  guile."  There  is  no  taking  for  granted  that 
the  man  to  whom  the  Lord  will  not  impute  iniquity 
has  been  sinless,  there  is  only  a  declaration  of  the 
intention  to  trust  the  renovated  spirit  in  him  as  the 
best  and  highest  means  of  strengthening  that  spirit. 


DEFINING  THE    VIA   MEDIA.  87 

The  former  struggle  is  recognized ;  the  defeat  is  recog- 
nized ;  the  renewal  of  the  struggle  and  the  victory  are 
recognized;  and  the  Divine  trust  is  promised  by  way 
of  securing  that  victory.  Newman  believes,  of  course, 
that  the  "accounting  just"  is  followed  by  the  being 
just.  I  should  have  thought  that  God  would  not,  and 
could  not,  declare  any  man  just  till  he  was  just,  and 
that  the  being  just  must  precede  the  Divine  declaration 
that  he  is  just.  Nor,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  does 
Newman  make  the  matter  any  clearer  by  the  following 
explanation  of  it.  "  God's  word,"  he  says,  *'  effects  what 
it  announces.  This  is  its  characteristic  all  through 
Scripture.  He  '  calleth  those  things  which  be  not  as 
though  they  are,'  and  they  are  forthwith.  Thus  in  the 
beginning  He  said,  '  Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was 
light.'  Word  and  deed  went  together  in  creation ;  and 
so  again  '  in  the  regeneration,'  '  The  Lord  gave  the  wordy 
great  was  the  company  of  the  preachers.'  So  again  in 
His  miracles.  He  called  Lazarus  from  the  grave,  and 
the  dead  arose ;  He  said  *  Be  thou  cleansed,'  and  the 
leprosy  departed ;  He  rehcked  the  winds  and  the  waves* 
and  they  were  still ;  He  commanded  the  evil  spirits,  and 
they  fled  away;  He  said  to  St.  Peter,  St.  Andrew, 
St.  John,  St.  James,  and  St.  Matthew,  '  Follow  Me,'  and 
they  arose,  '  for  His  word  was  with  power/  And  so  again 
in  the  sacraments.  His  word  is  the  consecrating  principle. 
As  He  blessed  the  loaves  and  fishes,  and  they  multiplied, 
so  He  '  blessed  and  brake,'  and  the  bread  became  His 
Body."  ^  And  that  would  all  be  applicable  if  what  was 
asserted  by  these  theologians  were,  that  at  God's  word 
"  Let  the  soul  be  just,"  it  became  just.     But  what  they 

1  Lectures  on  Justification,  3rd  edition,  p.  81. 


88  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

say  is,  that  He  declares  it  to  be  just  while  it  is  still 
unjust,  and  by  "accounting"  it  what  it  is  not,  by 
imputing  to  it  qualities  which  it  has  not,  He  makes 
it  what  He  had  assumed  it  to  be.  This  seems  to  me 
a  wholly  artificial  sort  of  language,  and  one  which 
tends  towards  the  depreciation  of  inspired  teaching,  not 
towards  its  exaltation.  The  drift  of  the  lectures  on 
justification  is  to  show  that  justification  must  issue  in 
sanctification ;  but  the  Catholic  doctrine  that  what 
justifies  is  either  grace  or  charity,  and  that  these  are 
different  names  for  the  same  reality, — grace  being  the 
word  which  tells  us  whence  the  gift  comes,  and  charity 
the  word  which  tells  us  what  manner  of  life  it  causes, — 
seems  to  me  much  nearer  the  truth  than  any  form  of  the 
Lutheran  doctrine.  The  lectures  were  indeed  an  elaborate 
effort  to  reconcile  the  Lutheran  view  of  this  subject 
with  the  Catholic  view,  and  constituted  the  application 
of  the  conception  of  the  Via  Media  to  the  special  subject 
of  faith  and  its  regenerating  effects  on  the  soul. 

A  much  more  interesting  effort  of  Newman's  to 
reconcile  his  position  with  Anglican  doctrine  was  his 
attempt  to  show,  in  the  lectures  on  Holy  Scriphcre  in 
Relation  to  the  Catholic  Creed,  that  there  is  no  more 
difficulty  in  proving  from  Scripture  the  Church  doctrines 
he  was  preaching  than  there  was  in  proving  from 
Scripture  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and  much  less 
than  in  proving  the  authenticity  of  the  canon.  These 
lectures  were  published  in  1838  as  Tract  85  of  the 
famous  Tracts  for  the  Times,  and  are  even  more  charac- 
teristic of  Newman's  mind  and  method  at  that  time  than 
the  much  more  famous  Tract  90.  He  begins  by  putting 
very  strongly  the  difficulty  in  which  those  persons  are 
placed  who  desire  to   believe  in  the  authority  of  the 


DEFINING  THE    VIA  MEDIA.  89 

Anglican  Church,  and  who  have  yet  been  taught  by  her 
that  all  her  doctrines  may  be  proved  from  Scripture. 
"  They  find  that  the  proof  is  rested  by  us  on  Scripture, 
and  therefore  they  require  more  explicit  Scripture  proof. 
They  say,  'All  this  that  you  say  about  the  Church  is 
very  specious  and  very  attractive ;  but  where  is  it  to  be 
found  in  the  inspired  volume  ? '  And  that  it  is  not  found 
there  (that  is,  I  mean,  not  found  as  fully  as  it  might 
be),  seems  to  them  proved  at  once  by  the  simple  fact 
that  all  persons  (I  may  say  all,  for  the  exceptions  are 
very  few) — all  those  who  try  to  form  their  creed  by  Scrip- 
ture only — fall  away  from  the  Church  and  her  doctrines, 
and  join  one  or  other  sect  and  party,  as  if  showing,  that 
whatever  is  or  is  not  scriptural,  at  least  the  Church,  by 
consent  of  all  men,  is  not  so."  ^  Newman  admits  that 
he  had  felt  this  difficulty  very  keenly  himself,  and  says 
he  regards  it  as  "  one  of  the  main  difficulties,  and  (as 
I  think)  one  of  the  intended  difficulties,  which  God's 
providence  puts  at  this  day  in  the  path  of  those  who 
seek  Him,  for  purposes  known  or  unknown,  ascertain- 
able or  not."  ^  But  great  as  the  difficulty  is,  he  states 
his  conviction  that,  as  he  has  otherwise  most  abundant 
proof  of  "the  Divine  origin  of  the  Church  system  of 
doctrine,"  as  of  apostolical  succession  and  the  sacra- 
mental system  which  depends  upon  it,  he  ought  not  to 
be  in  any  way  dismayed  because  the  evidence,  though 
given  also  in  Scripture,  "  might  be  given  more  explicitly 
and  fully,  and  (if  I  may  so  say)  more  consistently." 

This  introduction  to  the  lectures  seems  to  me  a 
virtual  admission  that  without  the  evidence  of  ecclesi- 
astical history  and  tradition  outside  Scripture,  Newman 

1  Trad  85,  p.  2,  2  j^^^  ^  2, 


90  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

could  never  have  found  in  Scripture  adequate  proof 
of  the  Church  system.  He  did  find  it  there  when 
the  history  of  the  primitive  Church  had  drawn  his 
attention  to  the  manner  in  which  that  Church  un- 
derstood and  acted  upon  Scripture,  but  without  the 
aid  of  that  practical  commentary,  he  clearly  admits, 
I  think,  that  Scripture  would  not  have  furnished  him 
wi«th  adequate  proof  of  the  Church  system.  In  dealing 
with  the  difficulty,  he  begins  by  owning  that  the 
general  drift  of  his  argument  is  of  a  kind  to  make  him 
somewhat  anxious  as  to  its  effect.  Its  tendency  is  to 
show  that  those  who  give  up  Church  principles  because 
they  are  not  explicitly  taught  in  Scripture,  ought  to 
give  up  other  principles  too  which  have  always  been 
held  to  be  of  the  very  essence  of  revelation;  and  he 
admits  his  reluctance  to  push  any  argument  which  may 
have  the  effect  not  of  making  those  who  do  not  now 
hold  Church  principles  accept  them,  but  of  making 
them  give  up  Christian  doctrines  which  they  had  hither- 
to confidently  held.  "  When  I  show  a  man  that  he  is 
inconsistent,"  he  says,  "  I  make  him  decide  whether  of 
the  two  he  loves  better — the  portion  of  truth  or  the 
portion  of  error  which  he  already  holds.  If  he  loves 
the  truth  better,  he  will  abandon  the  error;  if  the 
error,  he  will  abandon  the  truth.  And  this  is  a  fearful 
and  anxious  trial  to  put  him  under,  and  one  cannot  but 
feel  loth  to  have  recourse  to  it.  One  feels  that  perhaps 
it  may  be  better  to  keep  silence,  and  to  allow  him,  in 
shallowness  and  presumption,  to  assail  one's  own  position 
with  impunity,  than  to  retort,  however  justly,  his  weapons 
on  himself;  better  for  oneself  to  seem  a  bigot,  than  to 
make  him  a  scoffer."^  But,  serious  as  he  feels  this 
1  Tract  85,  pp.  3,  4. 


DEFINING   THE    FIA  MEDIA.  91 

difficulty  to  be,  he  holds  that  on  the  whole  it  avails  only 
"  for  the  cautious  use,  not  for  the  abandonment,  of  the 
argument  in  question.  For  it  is  our  plain  duty  to 
push  and  defend  the  truth  in  a  straightforward  way. 
Those  who  are  to  stumble  must  stumble  rather  than 
the  heirs  of  grace  should  not  hear."  Therefore,  though 
he  admits  frankly  that  when  his  argument  has  effect, 
it  may  have  either  a  bad  effect  or  a  good,  he  has  so 
much  more  confidence  in  the  good  effect  it  will  have 
on  men  who  love  the  truth,  than  in  the  bad  effect  it 
may  have  on  men  who  love  their  own  opinion,  that  he 
thinks  it  his  duty  to  push  home  the  argument  that 
Scripture,  if  it  does  not  explicitly  establish  Church 
doctrines,  does  not  explicitly  establish  even  the  univers- 
ally received  Christian  doctrines,  in  order  that  he  may 
induce  those  who  are  disposed  to  Church  principles  to 
accept  them  frankly  on  implicit  rather  than  on  explicit 
Scripture  testimony.  And  then  Newman  explains  can- 
didly what  he  finds  to  be  the  only  Scripture  testimony 
to  two  leading  Church  doctrines. 

While  Baptism  and  its  spiritual  benefits  are  often 
mentioned  in  the  Epistles,  "its  peculiarity  as  the  one 
plenary  remission  of  sin  "  "  is  not  insisted  on  with  such 
frequency  and  earnestness  as  might  be  expected, — chiefly 
in  one  or  two  passages  of  our  Epistles,  and  these 
obscurely  (in  Heb.  vi.  and  x.).  Again,  the  doctrine  of 
Absolution  is  made  to  rest  on  but  one  or  two  texts  (in 
Matt.  xvi.  and  John  xx.),  with  little  or  no  practical 
exemplification  of  it  in  the  Epistles,  where  it  was  to  be 
expected.  *  Why,'  it  may  be  asked,  *  are  not  the  Apostles 
continually  urging  their  converts  to  rid  themselves  of 
sin  after  Baptism  as  best  they  can,  by  penance,  con- 
fession, absolution,  satisfaction  ?   Again,  why  are  Christ's 


92  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

ministers  nowhere  called  priests,  or  at  most  in  one  or 
two  obscure  passages  (as  in  Rom.  xv.)  ? '  "  ^ 

And    after   a   number   of  similar   questions,    comes 
Newman's   mode   of  meeting   the   difficulty,  which  is 
to  show  that  if  we  are  to  accept  only  what  is  plainly 
and    consistently   enforced    in    Scripture,    we     should 
have    to   sacrifice    not   only   what   are    called    Church 
doctrines,  but   external  worship   altogether,  to   accept 
Christ's   saying,  that   the   hour   cometh  when  neither 
in  Samaria  nor   at    Jerusalem    the    Father    shall    be 
worshipped,    as    prohibiting    all    external    rites,    and 
forbidding   them   in  principle ;  as  denying  all   benefit 
from  the  Eucharist,  or  from  Baptism,  or  from  public 
worship  itself.     On  "  lioio  many  special  or  palmary  texts 
do  any  of  the  doctrines  or  rites  we  hold  depend  ?    What 
doctrines  or  rites  would  be  left  to  us  if  we  demanded 
the  clearest  and  fullest  evidence  before   we   believed 
anything  ? "  ^     Newman's  drift  is,  that  if  that  sort  of 
Scripture  evidence  were  required  for  every  doctrine  and 
rite,  nothing  of  Christianity  would  be  left  beyond  at 
most  what  the  Latitudinarians  are  willing  to  concede. 
By  Latitudinarianism  Newman  means  the  view  that  it 
is  not  at  all  important  what  doctrine  a  man  holds,  so 
long  as  he  acts  up  conscientiously  to  whatever  doctrine 
he  does  honestly  hold.     That  is  a  view  which  Newman 
thinks  simply  absurd  as  a  view  of  Revelation,     It  might 
be  an  adequate  view  of  natural  religion,  but  when  God 
reveals  Himself,  it  is  obvious  that  He  does  attach  great 
importance  to  the  substance  of  the  revelation  given, 
and  that  He  cannot  possibly  be  indifferent  what  a  man 
believes   concerning   Him,  since    He   has  provided   so 

1  Tract  85,  pp.  5,  6.  2  Ibid.  p.  12, 


DEFINING  THE   VtA  MEDIA.  93 

elaborate  an  agency  for  giving  him  a  true  belief,  or  at 
least  a  much  truer  belief  than  he  had  before,  or  than, 
by  the  mere  light  of  nature,  he  could  have  obtained. 
"  There  is  an  overpowering  improbability,"  he  says, 
"  in  Almighty  God's  announcing  that  He  has  revealed 
something,  and  revealing  nothing;  there  is  no  antecedent 
improbability  in  His  revealing  it  elsewhere  than  in  an 
inspired  volume."  ^  Hence,  if  Newman  had  to  choose 
between  Latitudinarianism  and  Roman  Catholicism,  he 
would  have  chosen  the  latter  as  far  the  more  rational 
of  the  two  views  of  revelation  to  any  one  who  was 
convinced  that  a  revelation  had  been  made.  Still  he 
thought  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Via  Media,  that  Scrip- 
ture does  reveal  with  sufficient  clearness  the  whole 
Church  system,  if  you  will  consent  to  look  at  Avhat  it 
implies,  as  well  as  at  what  it  explicitly  states,  was  quite 
tenable;  but  that  Latitudinarianism,  or  indifference  to 
doctrine  so  long  as  a  man  acted  honestly  on  his  own 
view,  was  utterly  untenable. 

Newman  never  seemed  to  think  that  the  unveiling 
of  God's  own  character  was,  after  all,  the  main  purpose 
of  revelation,  and  that  that  might  possibly  be  ade- 
quately accomplished  without  the  aid  of  any  elaborate 
Church  system,  or  any  great  network  of  doctrine  over 
and  above  the  evidence  of  what  God  had  actually 
done  in  order  to  embody  that  character  in  a  human 
life  and  personality.  To  Newman's  mind,  the  "dog- 
matic system"  on  which  he  insists,  always  seems  to 
me  to  overshadow  somewhat  the  central  truth  of  revel- 
ation— the  truth  as  to  the  character  of  God,  and  the 
significance   of  that   truth  as   displayed   in  what  He 

1  Tract  85,  p.  19. 


94  CAEDINAL  NEWMAN. 

had  done  for  men.  It  is  surely  not  nearly  so  certain 
that  any  elaborately  ramified  "system"  has  been 
revealed  to  us,  as  it  is  that  God's  character  has  been 
emphatically  revealed  in  what  the  Son  of  God  was  and 
did  for  mankind. 

Nothing  can  be  more  remarkable  than  the  way  in 
which  Newman  illustrates  the  principle  that  if  you 
look  only  to  the  surface  of  Scripture,  you  find  not  only 
no  adequate  evidence  for  many  of  the  greater  Christian 
doctrines,  but  no  adequate  evidence  for  the  inspiration 
of  Scripture  itself,  and  still  more,  no  adequate  evidence 
for  the  exact  contents  of  revelation,  for  what  Scripture 
consists  of,  for  what  is  properly  included  in  the  canon. 
He  described  in  a  most  graphic  passage  the  apparently 
accidental  character  of  the  contents  of  Scripture.  "  It  is 
as  if  you  were  to  seize  the  papers  or  correspondence  of 
leading  men  in  any  school  of  philosophy  or  science  which 
were  never  designed  for  publication,  and  bring  them  out 
in  one  volume.  You  would  find  probably  in  the  collection 
so  resulting  many  papers  begun  and  not  finished ;  some 
parts  systematic  and  didactic,  but  the  greater  part 
made  up  of  hints  or  of  notices  which  assume  first  prin- 
ciples instead  of  asserting  them,  or  of  discussions  upon 
particular  points  which  happened  to  require  their 
attention.  I  say  the  doctrines,  the  first  principles,  the 
rules,  the  objects  of  the  school  would  be  taken  for 
granted,  alluded  to,  implied,  not  stated.  You  would 
have  some  trouble  to  get  at  them ;  you  would  have 
many  repetitions,  many  hiatuses,  many  things  which 
looked  like  contradictions ;  you  would  have  to  work 
your  way  through  heterogeneous  materials,  and  after 
your  best  efforts  there  would  be  much  hopelessly 
obscure;  and    on  the  other  hand,  you  might   look   in 


DEFINING  THE   VIA  MEDIA.  95 

vain  in  sucli  a  casual  collection  for  some  particular 
opinions  wliich  the  critics  are  known,  nevertheless,  to 
have  held,  nay,  to  have  insisted  on."  ^ 

Such  is,  he  says,  with  some  limitations,  the  character 
of  Scripture,  which  is  not  only  an  apparently  miscel- 
laneous collection  of  writings,  but  one  of  which  we 
only  know  that  the  primitive  Church  had  sifted  it 
out,  and  believed  this  to  be  the  authentic  collection, 
though  why  these  books  were  accepted  and  others 
rejected  we  do  not  know.  But  what  Newman  infers 
from  this  is  not  that  this  account  of  the  Bible  is  the 
true  account,  but  that  there  is  obviously  a  great  deal 
beneath  the  letter  of  the  Bible  which  we  can  only  get 
at  by  trusting  the  authority  of  the  Church,  the  same 
authority  by  which  alone  confessedly  the  canon  of  Scrip- 
ture was  determined.  He  regards  all  these  criticisms  on 
Scripture  as  proving  not  that  it  is  what  it  seems  to  be 
at  first  sight,  but  that  it  is  much  deeper  than  what 
it  seems  to  be  at  first  sight,  and  what  only  the  Church 
has  adequately  disclosed  to  us.  His  general  inference 
from  his  examination  is,  that  "whether  this  or  that 
doctrine,  this  or  that  book  of  Scripture,  is  fully  provable 
or  not,  that  line  of  objection  to  them  cannot  be  right 
which  when  pursued  destroys  Church,  Creed,  Bible 
altogether^which  obliterates  the  very  Name  of  Christ 
from  the  world."  ^  His  view  evidently  was,  that  there 
is  something  analogous  in  the  apparently  accidental  and 
miscellaneous  character  of  Scripture  to  the  apparently 
accidental  and  miscellaneous  character  of  human  life, 
which,  though  it  is  governed  in  every  detail  by  Provi- 
dence, and   meant  for  the  discipline  and  probation  of 

1  Tract  85,  pp.  30—31.  ^  j^^^  pp.  iqo. 


96  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

man,  seems  to  be  so  full  of  what  is  unintentional,  and 
what  does  not  bear  upon  the  discipline  and  probation  of 
man.  The  Church  reveals  a  hidden  unity  and  purpose 
within  Scripture,  just  as  Scripture  reveals  a  hidden 
unity  and  purpose  in  human  life,  and  the  true  Christian 
has  to  choose  between  accepting  this  hidden  unity  and 
purpose  in  deference  to  the  teaching  of  the  Church, 
and  entering  on  a  course  of  destructive  criticism  which 
must  end  in  breaking  down  the  belief  in  revelation 
itself,  and  leaving  nothing  of  the  least  value  for  our 
faith  to  apprehend.  His  whole  drift  was,  that  the 
Church  can  verify  its  credentials  out  of  Scripture  if 
men  will  follow  her  guidance  in  first  accepting  as 
Scripture  what  she  has  given  them,  and  then  looking 
devoutly  for  the  true  meaning  of  Scripture  where  she 
tells  them  to  look  for  it ;  but  that  without  this  humility 
and  trust  in  the  Church,  Scripture  alone  will  fail  us, 
and  yield  up  incoherent  or  capricious  meanings,  varying 
with  the  minds  of  those  who  take  upon  themselves  the 
task  of  interpreting  it. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

NEWMAN   AT  ST.   MARY's. 

From  1828  to  1843  Newman  was  vicar  of  St.  Mary's 
as  well  as  chaplain  of  Littlemore,  and  preached  in  the 
pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  those  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons 
by  which  perhaps  he  has  influenced  the  world  more 
deeply,  though  not  perhaps  more  widely,  than  it  has 
ever  fallen  to  any  Englishman  of  our  time  to  influence 
it  through  the  instrumentality  of  the  pulpit.  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  described  Newman's  manner  in  the 
pulpit  in  a  speech  on  preaching,  which  he  delivered 
at  the  City  Temple  in  1887.  "When  I  was  an  under- 
graduate of  Oxford,"  he  said,  "  Dr.  Newman  was  looked 
upon  rather  with  prejudice  as  what  is  termed  a  Low 
Churchman,  but  was  very  much  respected  for  his 
character  and  his  known  ability.  Without  ostentation 
or  effort,  but  by  simple  excellence,  he  was  constantly 
drawing  undergraduates  more  and  more  around  him. 
Now  Dr.  Newman's  manner  in  the  pulpit  was  one 
about  which,  if  you  considered  it  in  its  separate  parts,  you 
would  arrive  at  very  unsatisfactory  conclusions.  There 
was  not  very  much  change  in  the  inflexion  of  the  voice  ; 
action  there  was  none.  His  sermons  were  read,  and 
his  eyes  were  always  bent  on  his  book ;  and  all  that, 

H 


98  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

you  will  say,  is  against  efficiency  in  preaching.  Yes, 
but  you  must  take  the  man  as  a  whole,  and  there  was 
a  stamp  and  a  seal  upon  him  ;  there  was  a  solemn 
sweetness  and  music  in  the  tone ;  there  was  a  complete- 
ness in  the  figure,  taken  together  with  the  tone  and 
with  the  manner,  which  made  even  his  delivery,  such 
as  I  have  described  it,  and  though  exclusively  from 
written  sermons,  singularly  attractive." 

I  should  very  much  doubt  if  Newman  could  ever  have 
been  properly  described  as  a  Low  Churchman  after  he 
became  the  vicar  of  St.  Mary's  in  1828.  He  himself 
tells  us  in  his  Apologia,  that  between  1822  and  1825  he 
was  fully  under  the  influence  of  Dr.  Hawkins,  afterwards 
the  Provost  of  Oriel,  from  whom  he  learned  the  doctrines 
of  Baptismal  Regeneration,  and  the  relation  between 
Scripture  and  tradition,  as  moderate  High  Churchmen 
understood  that  relation.  Indeed,  the  first  of  the  two 
sermons  belonging  to  the  year  1828  is  a  sermon  on 
Baptismal  Regeneration,  and  I  do  not  think  it  possible 
that  any  one  who  held  the  views  therein  set  down  could 
properly  be  described  as  a  Low  Churchman.  Moreover, 
on  the  appearance  of  The  Christian  Year  in  1827, 
Newman  adopted  at  once  and  enthusiastically  the 
sacramental  system  as  it  was  set  forth  in  The  Christian 
Year,  and  from  1828,  when  he  was  first  made  vicar  of 
St,  Mary's,  he  became  one  of  Keble's  intimate  friends 
and,  as  one  may  say,  disciples.  Hence  it  is  clear,  I 
think,  that  Newman's  reputed  Low  Churchmanship 
must  have  been  in  1828  the  mere  vestige  of  the 
character  by  which  he  was  at  first  known  at  Oxford, 
and  not  in  any  respects  a  true  reflection  of  the  teaching 
to  which  he  gave  utterance  in  the  pulpit  of  his  own 
church.     Newman  when  vicar  of  St.  Mary's  must  be 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.    MARY'S.  99 

regarded,  I  think,  as  a  representative  of  high  eccle- 
siastical views  from  the  very  first.  But  I  need  not  say 
that  it  was  not  this  characteristic  of  his  which  gained 
him  the  eager  attention  of  the  Oxford  undergraduates. 
The  very  first  characteristic  about  the  parochial  sermons 
of  this  vicar  of  St.  Mary's  is,  that  they  are  so  clear 
and  so  emphatic  in  their  recognition  of  the  actual 
facts  of  life. 

Take  as  an  illustration  what  may  well  have  been  one 
of  the  very  first  sermons  preached  by  him  as  vicar  of 
St.  Mary's  on  "Religion  a  weariness  to  the  natural 
man"  (July  27th,  1828,  sermon  2  of  vol.  vii.).  Consider 
the  calmness  with  which  he  sets  the  facts  of  the  case 
before  his  hearers.  "  Putting  aside  for  an  instant  the 
thought  of  the  ingratitude  and  the  sin  which  indiffer- 
ence to  Christianity  implies,  let  us,  as  far  as  we  dare, 
view  it  merely  as  a  matter  of  fact,  after  the  manner  of 
the  text,  and  form  a  judgment  on  the  probable  conse- 
quences of  it;  let  us  take  the  state  of  the  case  as  it  is 
proved,  and  survey  it  dispassionately,  as  even  an  un- 
believer might  survey  it,  without  at  the  moment  con- 
sidering whether  it  is  sinful  or  not ;  as  a  misfortune, 
if  we  will,  or  a  strange  accident,  or  a  necessary  condition 
of  our  nature — one  of  the  phenomena,  as  it  may  be 
called,  of  the  present  world."  That  is  just  the  way  to 
take  the  ears  of  young  men,  to  tell  them  that  you  want 
to  put  edification  for  a  moment  aside,  and  to  face  the 
facts  of  the  world  as  they  are,  without  moralizing  or 
preaching.  Then  how  vividly  he  describes  the  feelings 
of  the  young  about  religion.  "  The  very  terms  '  religion,' 
*  devotion,'  *  piety,'  *  conscientiousness,'  '  mortification,' 
and  the  like  you  find  to  be  inexpressibly  dull  and 
cheerless ;  you  cannot  find  fault  with  them,  indeed  you 


100  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

would  if  you  could ;  and  whenever  the  words  are  ex- 
plained in  particulars  and  realized,  then  you  do  find 
occasion  for  exception  and  objection.  But  though  you 
cannot  deny  the  claims  of  religion  used  as  a  vague  and 
general  term,  yet  how  irksome,  cold,  uninteresting,  un- 
inviting does  it  at  best  appear  to  you  !  how  severe  its 
voice  !  how  forbidding  its  aspect !  With  what  animation, 
on  the  contrary,  do  you  enter  into  the  mere  pursuits 
of  time  and  the  world !  What  bright  anticipations  of 
joy  and  happiness  flit  before  your  eyes  !  How  you  are 
struck  and  dazzled  at  the  view  of  the  prizes  of  this  life, 
as  they  are  called !  How  you  admire  the  elegancies 
of  art,  the  brilliance  of  wealth,  or  the  force  of  intellect ! 
According  to  your  opportunities,  you  mix  in  the  world, 
you  meet  and  converse  with  persons  of  various  con- 
ditions and  pursuits,  and  are  engaged  in  the  number- 
less occurrences  of  daily  life.  You  are  full  of  news ; 
you  know  what  this  or  that  person  is  doing,  and  what 
has  befallen  him ;  what  has  not  happened,  which  was 
near  happening,  what  may  happen.  You  are  full  of 
ideas  and  feelings  upon  all  that  goes  on  around  you. 
But  from  some  cause  or  other  religion  has  no  part,  no 
sensible  influence,  in  your  judgment  of  men  and  things. 
It  is  out  of  your  way.  Perhaps  you  have  your  pleasure 
parties ;  you  readily  take  your  share  in  them  time  after 
time ;  you  pass  continuous  hours  in  society  where  you 
know  that  it  is  quite  impossible  even  to  mention  the 
name  of  religion.  Your  heart  is  in  scenes  and  places 
where  conversation  on  serious  subjects  is  strictly  for- 
bidden by  the  rules  of  the  world's  propriety."  ^ 

Nothing  could  be  more  characteristic  of  Newman's 

1  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  vii.      A  new  edition,  pp. 
17,  18.     Rivingtons,  1868. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  101 

preaching  than  the  passage  in  which  he  reminds  his 
hearers  how  greatly  they  enjoy  the  little  thrill  of 
excitement  which  accompanies  news-telling,  nay,  not 
merely  news-telling,  but  telling  what,  under  certain 
conditions  which  were  "  very  near  happening,"  but  did 
not  happen,  the  news  might  have  been  though  it  was 
not ;  and  in  what  strange  contrast  this  thrill  of  pleasur- 
able interest  in  imparting  to  others  the  tidings  of  what 
might  have  been  as  much  as  a  ripple  in  the  stream  of 
time  (though  in  fact  it  was  not  even  a  ripple),  stands 
to  the  dismay  and  weariness  with  which  the  mere 
mention  of  eternal  interests  is  regarded.  That  profound 
reality  of  mind  was  one  of  the  most  important  of  the 
characteristics  which  made  Newman's  preaching  so 
potent  an  influence  at  Oxford. 

Again,  nothing  is  more  striking — it  is  indeed  another 
aspect  of  this  same  reality  of  mind — than  Newman's 
constant  anxiety  not  to  exaggerate  at  all  in  his  delinea- 
tions of  human  weakness  and  frivolousness.  In  the 
sermon  on  the  duty  of  self-denial,  preached  in  the  Lent 
of  1830,  he  describes  the  preoccupations  of  ordinary 
society  in  a  light  not  very  different  from  that  of  the 
sermon  I  have  just  quoted;  but  observe  how  anxious 
he  is  not  in  the  least  to  exceed  the  truth.  ''  You  may 
go  into  mixed  society;  you  will  hear  men  conversing 
on  their  friend's  prospects,  openings  in  trade,  or  realized 
wealth,  on  his  advantageous  situation,  the  pleasant  con- 
nections he  has  formed,  the  land  he  has  purchased,  the 
house  he  has  built ;  then  they  amuse  themselves  with 
conjecturing  what  this  or  that  man's  property  may  be, 
where  he  lost,  where  he  gained,  his  shrewdness  or  his 
rashness,  or  his  good  fortune  in  this  or  that  speculation. 
Observe,  I  do  not  say  that  such  conversation  is  wrong; 


102  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

I  do  not  say  that  we  must  always  have  on  our  lips  the 
very  thoughts  which  are  deepest  in  our  hearts,  or  that 
it  is  safe  to  judge  of  individuals  by  such  speeches ;  but 
when  this  sort  of  conversation  is  the  customary  standard 
conversation  of  the  world,  and  when  a  line  of  conduct 
answering  to  it  is  the  prevalent  conduct  of  the  world 
(and  this  is  the  case),  is  it  not  a  grave  question  for  each 
of  us,  as  livino^  in  the  world,  to  ask  himself  what  abidinor 
notion  we  have  of  the  necessity  of  self-denial,  and  how 
far  we  are  clear  of  the  danger  of  resembling  that  evil 
generation  which  *  ate  and  drank,  which  married  wives, 
and  were  given  in  marriage,  which  bought  and  sold, 
planted  and  builded,  till  it  rained  fire  and  brimstone 
from  heaven  and  destroyed  them  all."  '  ^  In  the  studious 
guardedness  of  this  criticism  of  the  world's  ways  lies 
more  than  half  the  impressiveness  and  power  of  this 
sermon. 

It  is  impossible  to  speak  of  the  extraordinaiy  reality 
of  Newman's  sermons  at  St.  Mary's  without  referring 
especially  to  the  wonderful  sermon  preached  on  the 
2nd  June,  1839,  on  "Unreal  Words."  To  more  than 
one  living  man  that  sermon  has,  I  believe,  been  one  of 
the  greater  influences  governing  the  conduct  of  their  life 
— I  mean,  of  course,  their  interior  life  as  well  as  their 
external  conduct.  The  teaching  that  under  the  Christian 
Revelation  we  are  "  no  longer  in  the  region  of^hadovvs," 
that  as  the  true  light  shines  we  are  bound  to  avail 
ourselves  of  it  and  make  all  our  professions  and  words 
real,  and  yet  that  nothing  is  so  rare  as  reality  and 
singleness  of  mind,  and  that  we  ought  to  test  our  own 
sincerity  as  Christ  so  often  tested  the  sincerity  of  those 

1  Parochial  and  Plam  Sermons^  vol.  vii.  p.  88. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  103 

who  made  great  professions  to  Him,  is  enforced  with  a 
freshness  and  dramatic  insight  that  makes  the  sermon 
unforgettable.  The  whole  effect  of  it  is  to  make  its 
readers  feel  how  easy  it  is  to  be  unconsciously  insincere. 
Newman  does  not  want  "  to  hinder  us  from  obeying," 
but  "  to  sober  us  in  professing."  "  To  make  professions," 
he  says,  ''  is  to  play  with  edged  tools,  unless  we  attend 
to  what  we  are  saying.  Words  have  a  meaning,  whether 
we  mean  that  meaning  or  not ;  and  they  are  imputed 
to  us  in  their  real  meaning  when  our  not  meaning  it  is 
our  own  fault."  ^ 

This  is  the  sense  in  which  Newman  understands 
our  Lord's  saying,  "By  thy  Avords  thou  shalt  be 
justified,  and  by  thy  words  thou  shalt  be  con- 
demned." Observe,  he  says,  how  little  reality  there 
is  in  any  speech  about  matters  with  which  people  are 
not  familiar,  how  absurdly  a  person  entirely  unfamiliar 
with  military  affairs  will  blunder  if  he  attempts  to 
make  'arrangements  for  the  commissariat  of  an  army, 
or  how  many  ridiculous  mistakes  will  be  made  by  a 
foreigner  who  comes  over  and  dashes  at  once  into  plans 
for  the  supply  of  our  markets.  It  would  be  like  the 
mistakes  of  a  dim-sighted  man  in  judging  of  colours, 
or  a  person  who  had  no  knowledge  of  music  in  criticizing 
a  performance  on  the  organ.  It  is  the  same  when  a 
stranger  offers  an  amiable  panegyric  on  the  manners 
and  character  of  some  one  of  whom  he  knows  nothing. 
They  praise  the  wrong  things,  and  if  they  find  fault 
at  all,  imagine  slights  where  no  slight  was  intended, 
discover  imaginary  meanings  in  events,  and  do  not 
understand    the    difference    between    one    point    and 

1  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  v.,  ser.  iii.  p.  33,  edition 
of  1868. 


104  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

another.  "They  look  at  them  as  infants  gaze  at  the 
objects  which  meet  their  eyes,  in  a  vague,  unappre- 
hensive way,  as  if  not  knowing  whether  a  thing  is  a 
hundred  miles  off  or  close  at  hand,  whether  great  or 
small,  hard  or  soft."  ^  Just  so  unreal,  he  says,  are  most 
men  in  their  religious  duties.  They  pray  not  with  all 
their  hearts  in  their  prayer,  but  are  full  of  self-con- 
sciousness, and  dwell  on  the  solemnity  of  the  act  in 
which  they  are  engaged,  and  attempt  to  rise  to  the 
occasion  by  feeding  their  mind  on  the  thought  of  the 
greatness  of  God  and  the  insignificance  of  man.  That 
is  not  prayer,  but  only  an  inflated  reverie  to  which 
the  thought  of  prayer  may  give  rise.  Of  this  nature 
are  the  commonplaces  about  the  vanity  of  life  and  the 
certainty  of  death,  or  the  reflections  to  which  people 
often  give  utterance  in  sickness  or  low  spirits — "  lifeless 
sounds  whether  of  pipe  or  harp."  The  whole  drift  of 
the  sermon  is  concentrated  in  the  sentence,  "Aim  at 
things,  and  your  words  will  be  right  without  aiming."  ^ 
"  Let  us  avoid  talking  of  whatever  kind,  whether  mere 
empty  talking,  or  censorious  talking,  or  idle  profession, 
or  descanting  upon  Gospel  doctrines,  or  the  affectation 
of  philosophy,  or  the  pretence  of  eloquence."  ^  I  sin- 
cerely believe  that  many  men's  lives  have  been  much 
sincerer  and  more  genuine  than  they  otherwise  would 
have  been  for  the  writing  and  publication  of  this 
sermon. 

But  though  reality  was  the  first  of  Newman's 
characteristics  as  a  preacher,  it  would  not  have  been 
half  as  effective  as  it  was,  had  it  not  been  combined 
with  that  profound  and  vivid  apprehension  of  the  truth 

^  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  v.,  ser.  iii.  p.  36,  edition 
of  1868.  2  iii^^  p,  44  3  ji,i^^  p_  45^ 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MAEYU  105 

and  the  marvel  of  revelation  which  is  so  seldom  united 
with  realism  such  as  his.  Sincere  preachers  have 
abounded  in  recent  years,  preachers  who  have  shown 
their  sincerity  by  openly  discarding  the  belief  in  those 
truths  of  the  Christian  revelation  which  cannot,  after 
some  sort  of  fashion,  be  reconciled  to  what  is  called 
"  modern  thought.''  Newman  held  that  modern  thought 
needed  reforming  in  the  light  of  the  Christian  revel- 
ation, not  the  Christian  revelation  in  the  light  of  modern 
thought.  Comparatively  early  in  his  pulpit  at  St.  Mary's, 
as  early  as  26th  August,  1832,  he  had  denounced  "the 
religion  of  the  day,"  expressly  because  it  accepted  only 
that  side  of  revealed  religion  which  fell  in  with  the 
tendencies  of  modern  civilization,  because  it  substituted 
enlightened  prudence,  or  the  love  of  the  beautiful,  or 
a  mixture  of  the  two,  for  the  awe  and  fear  which  con- 
science inspires  and  Divine  revelation  sternly  enforces. 
He  did  not  accommodate  his  religion  to  the  moral  and 
intellectual  atmosphere  in  which  he  found  himself. 
If  he  had,  it  might  have  been  comparatively  easy  to 
him  to  make  men  realize  vividly  what  they  were,  and 
what  he  wished  them  to  become.  On  the  contrary, 
what  he  wished  them  to  become,  involved  in  e?t&ry 
respect  a  very  painful  change  of  attitude,  a  change 
which  they  could  not  bring  about  without  going  through 
much  inward  tribulation.  **  I  do  not  at  all  deny,"  he 
said,  ''that  this  spirit  of  the  world  uses  words  and 
makes  professions  which  it  would  not  adopt  except  for 
the  suggestions  of  Scripture;  nor  do  I  deny  that  it 
takes  a  general  colouring  from  Christianity,  so  as  really 
to  be  modified  by  it,  nay,  in  a  measure,  enlightened 
and  exalted  by  it.  Again,  I  fully  grant  that  many 
persons  in  whom  this  bad  spirit  shows  itself  are  but 


106  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

partially  infected  by  it,  and  at  bottom  good  Christians 
though  imperfect.  Still,  after  all  here  is  an  existing 
teaching  only  partially  evangelical,  built  upon  worldly 
principle,  yet  pretending  to  be  the  Gospel,  dropping 
one  whole  side  of  the  Gospel,  its  austere  character, 
and  considering  it  enough  to  be  benevolent,  courteous, 
candid,  correct  in  conduct,  delicate, — though  it  includes 
no  true  fear  of  God,  no  fervent  zeal  for  His  honour,  no 
deep  hatred  of  sin,  no  horror  at  the  sight  of  sinners, 
no  indignation  and  compassion  at  the  blasphemies  of 
heretics,  no  jealous  adherence^  to  doctrinal  truth,  no 
especial  sensitiveness  about  the  particular  means  of 
gaining  ends,  providing  the  ends  be  good,  no  loyalty 
to  the  Holy  Apostolic  Church  of  which  the  creed 
speaks,  no  sense  of  the  authority  of  religion  as  external 
to  the  mind,  in  a  word,  no  seriousness, — and  therefore 
is  neither  hot  nor  cold,  but  (in  Scripture  language) 
lukeioarmy  ^ 

This  was  the  sermon  in  which  Newman  boldly  de- 
nounced the  optimistic  religions  of  the  day  as  shallow 
and  false,  and  expressed  his  belief  that  "  it  would  be 
a  gain  to  this  country  were  it  really  more  superstitious, 
more  bigoted,  more  gloomy,  more  fierce  in  its  religion 
than  at  present  it  shows  itself  to  be.  Not,  of  course, 
that  I  think  the  tempers  of  mind  herein  implied  de- 
sirable, which  would  be  an  evident  absurdity;  but  I 
think  them  infinitely  more  desirable  and  more  promis- 
ing than  a  heathen  obduracy  and  a  cold,  self-sufiicient, 
self- wise  tranquillity."  ^  "  Miserable,"  he  said,  "  as  were 
the  superstitions  of  the  dark  ages,  revolting  as  are 
the   tortures  now  in    use  among  the   heathen  of  the 

1  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  i.  pp.  313-14,  edit,  of  1868. 
2  Hid,  p.  320-21. 


NEWMAN  AT    ST.   MAEY'S.  107 

East,  better,  far  better  is  it  to  torture  one's  body  all 
one's  days,  and  to  make  this  life  a  hell  upon  earth, 
than  to  remain  in  a  brief  tranquillity  here,  till  the  pit 
at  length  opens  under  us,  and  awakens  us  to  an  eternal 
fruitless  consciousness  and  remorse.  Think  of  Christ's 
own  words,  '  What  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for 
his  soul?'  Again  He  says,  'Fear  Him  who  after  He 
hath  killed  hath  power  to  cast  into  hell ;  yea,  I  say  unto 
you,  fear  Him.'  Dare  not  to  think  that  you  have  got 
to  the  bottom  of  your  hearts;  you  do  not  know  what 
evil  lies  there.  How  long  and  earnestly  must  you  pray, 
how  many  years  must  you  pass  in  careful  obedience, 
before  you  have  any  right  to  lay  aside  sorrow,  and  to 
rejoice  in  the  Lord  ?"^ 

From  this  it  is  evident  that  Newman  did  not  hesitate 
to  preach  unsparingly  what  he  held  to  be  the  austere 
and  threatening  side  of  Christianity.  And  it  is  rarely 
indeed  that  a  man  who  dares  to  do  this,  confronts  the 
facts  of  human  life,  and  the  petty  manoeuvres  and  little 
self-deceptions  of  the  heart,  with  the  exquisite  insight 
and  delicate,  unexaggerating  candour  which  Newman 
displayed.  Those  who  preach  an  austere  religion 
usually  take  refuge  in  generalities,  laying  on  the  dull 
colours  in  impressive  masses,  which  excite  the  imagin- 
ation without  bringing  home  to  the  conscience  the 
actual  significance  of  moral  cowardice  and  worldlines?. 
Newman  made  no  attempt  to  pile  up  horrors,  but 
while  he  kept  to  the  language  of  Scripture  in  speaking 
of  what  was  most  awful,  he  showed  a  profound  and 
accurate  knowledge  of  the  frivolities  and  self-deceptions 
of  men  which  gave  the  world  the  measure  of  his 
appreciation  and  his  hatred  of  what  is  worst  in  men. 
1  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons^  vol.  i.  p.  323. 


108  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

That  a  man  with  so  precise  and  delicate  an  insight  into 
the  subtle  and  intricate  web  of  human  motives  should 
display  so  hearty  an  abhorrence  of  that  tainted  interior 
self  which  he  so  well  understood,  and  should  accept  the 
severest  judgments  upon  it  as  the  very  voice  of  Divine 
justice,  appeared  a  remarkable  vindication  of  that  stern- 
ness of  the  Divine  mind  on  which  he  insisted  with  so 
much  vividness  and  force.  That  so  sympathetic  and 
musical  a  voice  should  cry  aloud  and  spare  not,  was  of 
itself  a  singular  testimony  to  the  forbearance  of  the 
Divine  wrath,  and  to  the  searching  fire  of  the  Divine  love. 
For  the  tenderness  and  pathos  in  these  sermons  are 
at  least  as  striking  as  their  delicate  realism  and  their 
uncompromising  severity.  There  is  a  genuine  marvel  in 
the  combination  of  so  much  sweetness  and  pity  with 
so  much  sternness.  We  almost  hear  again  the  thrill 
of  the  subdued  voice  as  we  read  those  passages  with 
which  the  sermons  abound,  where  the  overwhelminor 
miracle  of  grace  is  delineated.  For  instance — "All 
the  trouble  which  the  world  inflicts  upon  us,  and  which 
flesh  cannot  but  feel, — sorrow,  pain,  care,  bereavement, 
— these  avail  not  to  disturb  the  tranquillity  and  the 
intensity  with  which  faith  gazes  upon  the  Divine 
Majesty.  All  the  necessary  exactness  of  our  obedience, 
the  anxiety  about  failing,  the  pain  of  self-denial,  the 
watchfulness,  the  zeal,  the  self-chastisements  which  are 
required  of  us,  as  little  interfere  with  this  vision  of 
faith  as  if  they  were  practised  by  another,  not  by  our- 
selves. We  are  two  or  three  selves  at  once,  in  the 
wonderful  structure  of  our  minds,  and  can  weep  while 
we  smile,  and  labour  while  we  meditate."  ^ 

1  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons^  vol.  iv.  pp.  146-7,  edition  of 
1868. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.    MARY'S.  109 

Or  take  the  passage  in  one  of  the  sermons  on  the 
Epiphany,  in  which  Newman  illustrates  from  ordinary 
human  life  that  transitory  gleam  of  earthly  glory 
which  Christ  had  in  His  infancy,  when  an  angel  an- 
nounced His  coming,  Elizabeth  saluted  Him  still  unborn 
as  her  Lord,  when  the  shepherds  worshipped  at  the 
message  they  received  from  on  high,  and  a  star  blazed 
above  the  humble  roof  under  which  He  entered  into  our 
sorrows.  "It  often  happens  that  when  persons  are  in 
serious  illnesses,  and  in  delirium  in  consequence,  or 
other  disturbance  of  mind,  they  have  some  few  minutes 
of  respite  in  the  midst  of  it,  when  they  are  even  more 
than  themselves,  as  if  to  show  us  what  they  really  are, 
and  to  interpret  for  us  what  else  would  be  dreary.  And, 
again,  some  have  thought  that  the  minds  of  children 
have  on  them  traces  of  something  more  than  earthly, 
which  fade  away  as  life  goes  on,  but  are  the  promise  of 
what  is  intended  for  them  hereafter.  And  somewhat 
in  this  way,  if  we  may  dare  compare  ourselves  with  our 
gracious  Lord,  in  a  parallel  though  higher  way,  Christ 
descends  to  the  shadows  of  this  world,  with  the  transitory 
tokens  on  Him  of  that  future  glory  into  which  He 
could  not  enter  till  He  had  suffered.  The  star  burned 
brightly  over  Him  for  a  time,  though  it  then  faded 
away."  ^ 

But  what  was  most  pathetic  in  Newman's  sermons 
at  St.  Mary's  was  not  so  much  the  tenderness  of 
feeling  which  he  combined  with  great  severity  of 
conscience, — though  that  was  most  pathetic, — as  the 
perpetual  and  constant  struggle  he  made  to  convince  a 
world  that  was  not  at  all  disposed  to  be  convinced  on 

^  Parochial  and  Plain  SermonSf  vol.  vii.  pp.  80,  81. 


/ 


no  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

that  head,  that  Christianity  is  not  compatible  with  that 
eager  and  almost  headlong  immersion  in  external  pur- 
suits and  practical  cares  which  seems  to  be  the  special 
temptation  of  the  English  genius  and  temperament. 
Englishmen,  so  long,  at  all  events,  as  they  restrain 
themselves  within  given  rules  of  conduct,  are  visited  by 
no  compunctions  when  they  plunge  into  life  and  take 
their  fill,  as  it  were,  of  its  joys  and  griefs,  its  anxieties 
and  cares.  They  have  no  wish  at  all  to  be  "  detached  " 
from  this  cheery  and  vehement  fashion  of  living,  no  con- 
viction even  that  they  ought  to  be  detached  from  it. 

But  Newman  from  the  first  date  of  his  preaching  in 
St.  Mary's  strove  to  drive  home  to  his  hearers  his  own 
profound  conviction  that  such  a  life  is  not  the  Christian's 
life  at  all,  and  he  pressed  this  upon  them,  till  at  last  he 
was  all  but  convinced  that  he  could  not  press  it  on 
them  with  any  success  from  his  Anglican  position,  and 
must  find  some  other  Church  in  which  he  could,  in 
his  own  opinion,  more  consistently  preach  that  some 
degree  of  detachment  of  the  heart  from  the  joys  and 
cares  of  this  life,  and  of  steady  increase  in  the  degree  of 
this  detachment,  is  essential  to  thai  growth  in  the  love 
of  God  upon  which  all  rehgious  and_  moral  discipline  is 
intended  to  concentrate  itself  and  in  which  it  should 
find  its  consummation.  He  seems  to  have  become 
gradually  persuaded  that  this  ideal  of  life  was  the 
opposite  of  the  genuine  Protestant  ideal,  and  that  the 
reason  why  Protestant  nations  on  the  whole  beat  the 
Roman  Catholic  nations  in  the  race  for  predominance, 
is  precisely  this,  that  they  give  their  hearts  to  that 
race,  while  the  Roman  Catholics,  the  more  they  are 
filled  with  the  spirit  of  their  religion,  the  more  detach 
their  hearts  from  the  earthly  struggle,  and  when  they 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  Ill 

are  untrue  to  it,  illustrate  the  saying  that "  the  corruption 
of  the  best  is  the  worst." 

I  have  shown  how  trenchant  was  Newman's  de- 
nunciation of  the  mere  religion  of  civilization  as  early 
as  1832,  thirteen  years  before  he  abandoned  the 
Anglican  Church.  During  the  whole  of  that  time 
an  impression  was,  I  think,  steadily  growing,  which 
eventually  assumed  the  force  of  a  conviction,  that 
the  theology  of  the  Via  Media  would  not  hold  water, 
that  the  religion  of  the  Via  Media  would  never  hold 
its  own  without  the  aid  of  those  witnesses  to  the 
blessedness  of  worship  which  regular  religious  orders, 
devoted  even  in  this  world  to  the  life  of  adoration, 
afford,  and  that  Anglicanism  aims  too  much  at  a  com- 
promise between  different  ideals  of  life,  ever  to  sustain 
heartily  religious  orders  of  this  kind.  I  have  shown 
his  feeling  as  to  "  the  Religion  of  the  Day "  in  1832. 
Let  me  take  one  of  the  sermons  of  1836  (vol.  iv. 
sermon  xx.),  called  "  The  Ventures  of  Faith,"  which 
shows  how  this  feeHng,  that  even  the  Christian  life 
of  the  Anglican  communion  was  not  what  it  should 
be,  was  growing  upon  him  even  then,  though  he  was 
far  from  feeling  as  yet  any  doubt  at  all  as  to  the 
Church  to  which  he  owed  his  loyalty  and  love.  He 
asks,  how  would  Christians  be  greater  losers  (as  they 
ought  to  be  of  course)  than  any  other  men,  supposing, 
what  is  impossible,  that  Christ's  promises  were  to  fail  ? 
"  What  have  we  ventured  for  Christ  ?  "  he  asks ;  "  what 
have  we  given  to  Him  on  a  belief  of  His  promise  ? " — 
namely,  that  if  we  forsake  all  for  Christ,  Christ  will  Him- 
self reward  us  both  in  this  life  and  the  next.  "  The 
Apostle  said  that  he  and  his  brethren  would  be  of  all 
men  the  most  miserable  if  the  dead  were  not  raised. 


112  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

Can  we  in  any  degree  apply  this  to  ourselves  ?  We 
think,  perhaps,  at  present  we  have  some  hope  of  heaven ; 
well,  this  we  should  lose,  of  course;  but  how  should 
we  be  worse  off  as  to  our  ^present  condition  ?  A  trader 
who  has  embarked  some  property  in  a  speculation 
which  fails,  not  only  loses  his  prospect  of  gain,  but 
somewhat  of  his  own  which  he  ventured  with  the  hope 
of  the  gain.  This  is  the  question — What  have  we 
ventured  ?  I  really  fear,  when  we  come  to  examine,  it 
will  be  found  that  there  is  nothing  we  resolve,  nothing 
we  do,  nothing  we  do  not  do,  nothing  we  avoid,  nothing 
we  choose,  nothing  we  give  up,  nothing  we  pursue, 
which  we  should  not  resolve,  and  do,  and  not  do,  and 
avoid,  and  choose,  and  give  up,  and  pursue,  if  Christ 
had  not  died  and  heaven  were  not  promised  us.  I 
really  fear  that  most  men  called  Christians,  whatever 
they  may  profess,  whatever  they  may  think  they  feel, 
whatever  warmth  and  illumination  and  love  they  may 
claim  as  their  own,  yet  would  go  on  almost  as  they  do, 
neither  much  better  nor  much  worse,  if  they  believed 
Christianity  to  be  a  fable.  When  young  they  indulge 
their  lusts,  or  at  least  pursue  the  world's  vanities ;  as 
time  goes  on  they  get  into  a  fair  way  of  business  or 
other  mode  of  making  money;  then  they  marry  and 
settle ;  and  their  interest  coinciding  with  their  duty, 
they  seem  to  be,  and  think  themselves,  respectable  and 
religious  men;  they  grow  attached  to  things  as  they 
are ;  they  begin  to  have  a  zeal  against  vice  and  error ; 
and  they  follow  after  peace  with  all  men.  Such  conduct 
indeed,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  right  and  praiseworthy. 
Only  I  say  it  has  not  necessarily  anything  to  do  with 
religion  at  all ;  there  is  nothing  in  it  which  is  any  proof 
of  the  presence  of  religious  principle  in  those  who  adopt 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  113 

it ;  there  is  nothing  they  would  not  do  still,  though  they 
had  nothing  to  gain  from  it  except  what  they  gain  from 
it  now :  they  do  gain  something  now,  they  do  gratify 
their  present  wishes,  they  are  quiet  and  orderly  because 
it  is  their  interest  and  taste  to  do  so ;  but  they  vcniui^e 
nothing,  they  risk,  they  sacrifice,  they  abandon  nothing, 
on  the  faith  of  Christ's  word." 

And  then  Newman  went  on  to  say  that  St.  Barnabas, 
for  instance,  had  a  property  in  Cyprus  which  he  gave 
up  for  the  poor  of  Christ,  and  that  he  therefore  did 
something  that  he  would  not  have  done  unless  the 
Gospel  were  true,  and  that  if  the  Gospel  could  have 
turned  out  a  fable,  St.  Barnabas  would  have  made  a 
great  mistake.  But  which  of  us,  he  asks,  does  what 
St.  Barnabas  did — gives  up  the  prospect  of  wealth  or 
eminence  in  order  to  be  nearer  Christ,  or  puts  off 
worldly  comforts,  or  schools  himself  by  inflicting  on 
himself  voluntary  penances  for  his  sins,  or  even  in 
prospect  of  wealth  honestly  and  heartily  prays  that  he 
may  never  be  rich,  because  he  thinks  that  riches  would 
alienate  his  heart  from  Christ  ?  Yet  if  we  do  none  of 
these  things,  we  are  not  really  shaping  our  whole 
earthly  course  by  Christ's  promises,  and  making  our 
life  quite  other  than  it  would  have  been  but  for  those 
promises.  Such  was  Newman's  pathetic  impatience 
with  the  apparent  absence  in  the  Anglican  Church  of 
anything  like  habitual  renunciation  of  the  world  as 
early  even  as  1836.  But  the  feeling  certainly  grew 
rapidly  before  he  first  began  to  entertain  any  doubt 
that  he  was  in  a  true  Church.  In  a  sermon  preached 
on  the  3rd  March,  1839,  on  "  Endurance,  the  Christian's 
portion,"  he  expresses  most  pathetically  his  belief,  that 
Christians  who  live  a  perfectly  serene  and  happy  life  have 

I 


114  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

forfeited  by  their  unfaithfulness  the  promise  made  to 
Christians  of  suffering  in  this  world,  which  our  Lord 
and  St.  Paul,  and  indeed  all  the  Apostles,  gave,  and  that 
their  prosperity  and  good  understanding  with  the  world 
are  as  much  proof  that  they  are  not  living  in  obedience 
to  the  revealed  truth,  as  the  troubles  and  sufferings  of 
the  Jews  under  the  Mosaic  dispensation  were  proof  that 
they  (who  had  been  promised  prosperity  if  they  did 
obey  God's  law)  were  not  living  in  obedience  to  that 
truth. 

He  insists  especially  on  the  prosperity  derived 
from  the  alliance  of  the  State  with  the  Church,  as 
a  kind  of  prosperity  earned  by  unfaithfulness  to  the 
Church's  true  interests.  "If  'the  present  distress* 
of  which  St.  Paul  speaks  does  not  denote  tHe  ordinary 
state  of  the  Christian  Church,  the  New  Testament  is 
scarcely  written  for  us,  but  must  be  remodelled  before 
it  can  be  made  apply.  There  are  men  of  the  world 
in  this  day  who  are  attempting  to  supersede  the 
precepts  of  Christ  about  almsgiving  and  the  main- 
tenance of  the  poor.  We  are  accustomed  to  object  that 
they  contravene  Scripture.  Again,  we  hear  of  men 
drawing  up  a  Church  government  for  themselves,  or 
omitting  Sacraments,  or  modifying  doctrines.  We  say 
they  do  not  read  Scripture  rightly.  They  answer,  per- 
haps, that  Scripture  commands  or  countenances  many 
things  which  are  not  binding  on  us  eighteen  hundred 
years  after.  They  consider  that  the  management  of  the 
poor,  the  form  of  the  "Church,  the  power  of  the  State 
over  it,  the  nature  of  its  faith,  or  the  choice  of  its 
ordinances,  are  not  points  on  which  we  need  rigidly 
keep  to  Scripture ;  that  times  have  changed.  This  is 
what  they  say;  and   can  we   find   fault  with  them  if 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  115 

we  ourselves  allow  that  the  New  Testament  is  a  dead 
letter  in  another  most  essential  part  of  it  ?  Is  it 
strange  that  they  should  think  that  the  world  may  now 
tyrannize  over  the  Church,  when  we  allow  that  the 
Church  may  now  indulge  in  the  world  ?  Surely  they 
do  but  make  a  fair  bargain  with  us;  both  they  and  we 
put  aside  Scripture,  and  then  agree  together — we  to 
live  in  ease,  and  they  to  rule.  We  have  taken  the 
world's  pay,  and  must  not  grudge  its  yoke.  Independ- 
ence surely  is  not  the  Church's  privilege,  unless  hardship 
is  her  portion.  Well,  and  perhaps  affliction,  hardship, 
distress,  ill-usage,  evil  report,  are  her  portion,  both 
promised  and  bestowed,  though  at  first  sight  they  may 
seem  not  to  be.  What  proof  is  there  that  temporal 
happiness  was  the  gift  of  the  Law,  which  will  not  avail 
for  temporal  adversity  being  that  of  the  Gospel  ?  .  .  .  You 
will  say  perhaps  that  the  Jewish  promise  was  suspended 
on  a  condition,  the  condition  of  obedience,  and  that  the 
Jews  forfeited  the  reward  because  they  did  not  merit  it. 
True ;  let  it  be  so.  And  what  hinders,  in  like  manner, 
if  Christians  are  in  prosperity,  not  in  adversity,  that  it 
is  because  they  too  have  forfeited  the  promise  and 
privilege  of  affliction  by  disobedience  ? "  ^ 

The  pathos  of  this  self-accusation,  that  he  and  his 
friends  had  forfeited  the  privilege  of  adversity  which 
Christ  had  promised,  by  disobedience,  seems  to  me 
perfectly  unique.  Yet  pathos  of  this  kind  runs  like 
a  silver  thread  through  the  whole  series  of  Oxford 
sermons.  Obviously  Newman  was  very  restive  under 
the  political  conditions  of  the  Establishment,  not  only 
because  he  wanted  to  obtain  a  greater  independence 

1  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons,  vol.  v.  pp.  290 — 292,  edition 
of  1868. 


116  OAEDINAL  NEWMAN. 

for  the  Church  than  the  political  alliance  with  the 
State  admitted,  but  also  because  he  resented  the  comfort, 
the  ease,  the  sleek  serenity,  the  worldly  consideration 
and  influence  over  worldly  people,  to  which  the  alliance 
with  the  State  had  brought  our  Anglican  clergy.  He 
believed  that  no  Church  which  was  full  of  the  spirit 
of  Christ  could  possibly  be  on  such  good  terms  with  the 
spirit  of  the  Avorld. 

This  was  the  line  of  thought  which  led  Newman  to 
the  position  which  he  took  up  so  decidedly  in  1843, 
when  he  was  already  wavering  in  his  allegiance  to  the 
Church  of  England,  as  to  the  true  character  of  "  The 
Apostolical  Christian  " ;  and  the  pathos  of  his  faith  and 
his  self-distrust  was  never  more  powerfully  expressed. 

He  preached  on  this  subject  early  in  February  1843, 
and  it  was  obvious  from  this  sermon  whither  his  thoughts 
were  leading  him.^  It  is  possible,  he  said,  to  draw  out 
from  the  New  Testament  itself  the  typical  character- 
istics of  the  Christian  of  the  first  age  of  the  Church, 
only  we  had  read  the  passages  which  describe  him  so 
often  that  we  had  lost  the  power  of  taking  in  their  true 
meaning.  The  first  of  the  characteristics  of  a  "Bible 
Christian"  was  to  be  "without  worldly  ties  or  objects, 
to  be  living  in  this  w^orld  but  not  for  this  world."  St. 
Paul  says,  "  Our  conversation  is  in  heaven;"  and  again, 
"  Here  we  have  no  continuing  city,  but  we  seek  one  to 
come."  And  it  is  from  heaven,  St.  Paul  tells  us,  that 
he  looks  for  Christ.  This,  said  Newman,  was  the  chief 
mark  of  the  Christian  of  the  early  Church — that  he  was 
one  who  looked  for  Christ,  "  not  for  gain,  or  distinction, 
or  power,  or  pleasure,  or  comfort."     The  affections  were 

1  The  sermon  is  the  nineteenth   of  those  in  the  volume  on 
Subjects  of  the  Day  (edition  of  1869). 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  117 

to  be  set  "  on  things  above,  not  on  things  of  the  earth." 
'^.  Hence  loatching  was  an  especial  mark  of  the  Scripture 
Christian.  "What  I  say  unto  you,  I  say  unto  all, 
Watch."  And  the  primitive  Christians  kept  the  com- 
mand. "  They  were  continually  in  the  Temple,  praising 
and  blessing  God."  "These  all  continued  with  one 
accord  in  prayer  and  supplication  with  the  women." 
Peter  goes  up  to  the  housetop  to  pray  at  the  sixth 
hour.  Paul  and  Silas  pray  and  sing  praises  at  midnight 
in  their  prison.  The  Church  of  Tyre  bring  Paul  on  his 
way  out  of  the  city,  and  kneel  down  on  the  shore  and 
pray.     And  the  result  of  all  this  watching  and  prayer 

,  is  that  the  primitive  Christians  became  "a  simple, 
innocent,   grave,   humble,    patient,    meek,   and    loving 

,  body,  without  earthly  advantages  or  worldly  influence." 
They  unite  their  possessions  and  have  them  in 
2  common,  and  are  of  one  heart  and  one  soul,  and  dis- 
tribution is  made  by  the  Apostles  to  every  man  accord- 
ing as  he  has  need.  They  take  literally  the  exhortation 
to  have  their  treasure  in  heaven,  and  not  one  which 
moth  and  dust  can  corrupt ;  they  obey  the  injunction, 
"  Let  your  loins  be  girded  about,  and  your  lights  burn- 
ing ; "  and  again,  that  implied  in  "  how  hardly  shall  they 
that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God."  They 
take  literally  the  suggestion,  "  No  man  that  warreth 
ir  entangleth  himself  with  the  affairs  of  this  life ;  that  he 
may  please  him  who  hath  chosen  him  to  be  a  soldier." 
"  Love  not  the  world,  neither  the  things  of  the  world," 
was  the  rule  of  their  life.  "Be  ye  not  conformed  to 
this  world,  but  be  ye  transformed  by  the  renewing  of 
your  mind,"  was  the  ideal  of  their  inward  character. 
They  earnestly  desired  with  St.  Paul  that  the  world 
should  be-  crucified  to  them,  and  they  unto  the  world. 


118  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

In  a  word,  "they  love  God,  and  give  up  the  world." 
And  finally,  they  glory  in  their  tribulations,  to  use  St. 
Paul's  language.  These  troubles  borne  for  Christ  are 
a  genuine  source  of  joy  to  them.  They  are  blessed  in 
their  mourning,  and  in  their  hungering  and  thirsting, 
and  poverty  and  privations,  as  Christ  promised  them 
that  they  should  be.  Newman  then  entreats  his  hearers 
in  the  following  pathetic  words — "Bear  to  look  at 
the  Christianity  of  the  Bible ;  bear  to  contemplate  the 
idea  of  a  Christian  traced  by  inspiration  without  gloss 
or  comment,  or  tradition  of  men.  Bear  to  have  read 
to  you  a  number  of  texts,  texts  which  might  be  multi- 
plied sevenfold ;  texts  which  can  be  confronted  by  no 
others ;  which  are  no  partial  selections,  but  a  specimen 
of  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament."^  It  does  not 
follow,  he  says,  that  all  men  are  called  upon  to  imitate 
this  model  to  the  life, — though  he  does  not  explain  why 
it  does  not  follow,  supposing  that  these  commands  were 
given,  as  they  were,  to  all  the  first  disciples  of  Christ, 
and  that  apparently  they  were  followed  by  the  primitive 
Church  as  a  whole ; — but  whether  that  follows  or  not, 
it  is  at  least  true  that  this  was  the  life  enjoined  on  His 
followers  by  our  Lord,  and  it  is  also  true,  that  in  all  ages 
there  have  been  plenty  of  persons  who  followed  them 
literally.  When  asked  who  these  are,  Newman  answers, 
— and  it  must  have  taken  great  gallantry  and  courage 
to  make  this  answer  in  an  Oxford  pulpit  at  that  day, — 
"  I  am  loth  to  say ;  I  have  reason  to  ask  you  to  be  honest 
and  candid,  for  so  it  is,  as  if  from  consciousness  of  the 
fact,  and  dislike  to  have  it  urged  upon  us,  we  and  our  fore- 
fathers have  been  accustomed  to  scorn  and  ridicule  these 

1  Newman's  sermons  on  Subjects  of  the  Day,  edition  of  1869, 
pp.  289,  290. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  119 

faithful,  obedient  pei:sons,  and  in  our  Saviour's  very 
Avords, '  to  cast  out  their  name  as  evil  for  the  Son  of  man's 
sake.'  But  if  the  truth  must  be  spoken,  what  are  the 
humble  monk  and  the  holy  nun,  and  other  regulars,  as 
they  were  called,  but  Christians  after  the  very  pattern 
given  us  in  Scripture  ?  What  have  they  done  but 
this — pepetuate  in  the  world  the  Christianity  of  the 
Bible  ?  Did  our  Saviour  come  on  earth  suddenly,  as 
He  will  one  day  visit  it,  in  whom  would  He  see  the 
features  of  the  Christians  whom  He  and  His  Apostles 
left  behind  them  but  in  them  ?  Who  but  these  give 
up  home  and  friends,  and  wealth  and  ease,  good  name 
and  liberty  of  will,  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  ?  Where 
shall  we  find  the  image  of  St.  Paul,  or  St.  Peter,  or  St, 
John,  or  of  Mary  the  mother  of  Mark,  or  of  Philip's 
daughters,  but  in  those  who,  whether  they  remain  in 
seclusion,  or  are  sent  over  the  earth,  have  calm  faces, 
and  most  plaintive  voices,  and  spare  frames,  and  gentle 
manners,  and  hearts  weaned  from  the  world,  and  wills 
subdued  ;  and  for  their  meekness  meet  with  insult,  and 
for  their  purity  with  slander,  and  for  their  gravity  with 
suspicion,  and  for  their  courage  with  cruelty ;  yet  meet 
with  Christ  everywhere — Christ  their  all-sufficient,  ever- 
lasting portion,  to  make  up  to  them,  both  here  and 
hereafter,  all  they  suffer,  all  they  dare,  for  His  Name's 
sake?" 

This  is  the  sermon  which  seems  to  me  to  announce 

most   clearly  the  change   of  faith  which  was  coming, 

but    which    was    still    deferred    for    more    than    two 

!  years.     And  the  pangs  of  the  anticipated  rupture  give 

/  to  the  pathos  of  all  his  sermons  at  this  time  the  most 

'  exquisite   tenderness  and   depth.      Evidently   he    had 

made  up  his  mind  that  detachment  from  the  world  was 


120  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

enjoined  by  our  Lord  on  His  followers,  and  could  see 
evidence  of  that  detachment  partially  indeed  in  the 
secular  clergy  of  Catholic  countries,  but  completely 
only  in  the  "  Regular  Clergy  "  of  Christian  monasticism. 
He  never  explains  why  he  thinks  that  which  is  obliga- 
tory on  those  who  set  the  example,  is  not  obligatory  also 
on  the  Christian  community  at  large,  why  it  should 
need  a  distinct  call  to  make  it  the  duty  of  ordinary 
Christians  now,  to  act  like  the  ordinary  Christians  of 
the  primitive  Church.  He  suggests  that  Ananias  and 
Sappbirawere  not  required  to  give  up  all  their  property, 
but  were  only  required  to  be  honest  in  stating  what  it 
was  that  they  had  given  up.  And  he  speaks  of  them  as 
a  proof  that  "  those  great  surrenders  which  Scripture 
speaks  of  are  not  incumbent  on  all  Christians.  They 
could  not  be  voluntary,"  he  says,  "  if  they  were  duties ; 
they  could  not  be  meritorious  if  they  were  not  vohmtary." 
But  if  that  be  so,  surely  a  great  part  of  the  literalness  he 
has  demanded  for  the  interpretation  of  our  Lord's  words, 
"  He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more  than  Me  is  not 
worthy  of  Me  ;  and  he  that  loveth  son  or  daughter  more 
than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me,"  vanishes  at  once.  Either 
these  and  similar  passages  exclude  from  true  discipleship 
all  who  do  not  make  these  sacrifices,  or  they  do  not ; 
and  if  they  do  not,  surely  they  cannot  be  said  to  lay  an 
absolute  obligation  on  the  Church  at  all.  However, 
Newman  had  satisfied  himself  that  what  was  imposed 
on  those  who  were  to  set  a  Christian  example  was  not 
inposed  on  all  the  followers  of  Christ,  and  this  sermon 
was  the  announcement  that  he  could  see  no  true  Church 
except  where  the  ecclesiastical  motive-power  at  least 
was  in  the  hands  of  men  who  had  renounced  the  joys  of 
the  world  for  Christ's  sake,  in  other  words,  was  in  the 


NEWMAN  AT   ST.   MARY'S.  121 

hands  of  a  self-denying  clergy,  and  under  the   moral 
influence  of  the  great  monastic  orders. 

Newman's  next  sermon,  preached  within  a  fortnight 
of  this,  and  bringing  out  still  more  completely  the  deep 
pathos  of  his  situation  in  a  Church  which  he  loved  dearly 
but  revered  less  every  year,  was  that  on  "  Wisdom  and 
Innocence,"  which  so  painfully  impressed  the  late  Canon 
Kingsley,  and  served  to  convince  him  that  not  only  had 
truth  "  never  been  a  virtue  with  the  Roman  clergy,"  but 
that  "  Father  Newman  informs  us  that  it  had  not,  and  on 
the  whole  ought  not  to  be,  that  cunning  is  the  weapon 
which  Heaven  has  given  to  the  saints  wherewith  to  with- 
stand the  brute  force  of  the  wicked  world,  which  marries 
and  is  given  in  marriage."  And  no  doubt  the  sermon 
was  Newman's  own  answer  to  the  assertion  that  the 
independent  ecclesiastical  polity  v^hich  he  so  much  pre- 
ferred to  the  humdrum  Anglican  establishment,  has 
usually  been  disfigured  by  a  diplomatic  and  furtive 
policy,  which  is  plainly  inconsistent  with  Christian 
rectitude  and  courage.  What  he  said  in  answer  to 
this  was  to  put  forward  our  Lord's  injunction  to  His 
disciples,  to  meet  the  persecutions  of  the  world  of  which 
He  forewarned  them  by  being  "wise  as  serpents  and 
harmless  as  doves."  They  were  to  go  forth  as  "  sheep  in 
the  midst  of  wolves,"  but  not  with  the  helplessness  and 
witlessness  of  sheep.  They  were  to  injure  no  one,  but 
they  were  to  be  prudent  and  wary,  and  not  to  expose 
themselves  to  unnecessary  danger.  They  were  to  use 
a  certain  reserve,  and  not  blurt  out  what  would  merely 
irritate  the  world  without  some  sufficient  hope  of  teach- 
ing the  world.  Now  such  conduct  produces  in  the 
world  the  impression  of  duplicity  and  craft,  an  impres- 
sion which  is  greatly  heightened  when  it  is  observed 


122  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

how  successful  Christians  are  in  spreading  their  teach- 
ing not  only  in  spite  of  their  weakness  but  in  conse- 
quence of  it,  for  the  blessing  of  God  which  rests  upon 
the  diffusion  of  the  truth,  and  has  of  course  a  super- 
natural effect,  is  not  recognized  by  the  world,  and  so 
the  world  assumes  that  there  must  be  great  subtlety 
and  craft  where  there  was  really  nothing  more  than 
simplicity  of  purpose  and  the  presence  of  mind  which 
absolute  faith  brings  with  it.  And  no  doubt  Newman's 
was  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  disposition  of  the  world 
to  ascribe  craft  and  subtlety  to  the  primitive  Christians. 
But  Newman  hardly  recognized  how  thoroughly  the 
maxim  that  the  corruption  of  the  best  is  the  worst, 
applies  to  the  ecclesiastical  type  of  character,  and  how 
often  that  reserve  and  prudence  which  Christ  en- 
joined has  been  transformed  in  that  character  into  the 
duplicity  and  cunning  which  the  world  justly  condemns. 
"Bishops,"  he  said,  "have  been  called  hypocritical  in 
submitting  and  yet  opposing  themselves  to  the  civil 
power  in  a  matter  of  plain  duty  if  a  popular  move- 
ment was  the  consequence ;  and  then  hypocritical  again 
if  they  did  their  best  to  repress  it."  ^  No  doubt  they 
have,  sometimes  unjustly,  and  sometimes  quite  justly. 
It  is  a  very  difficult  matter,  especially  when  a  great 
and  able  ecclesiastic  finds  himself  pitted  against  a 
violent  world,  to  keep  his  actions  steadfastly  within 
the  lines  of  strict  Christian  simplicity  and  charity,  and 
when  he  once  transgresses  these  lines,  he  soon  shows 
us  how  much  easier  it  is  to  discredit  the  Church  than 
to  bring  disgrace  on  the  Avorld.  I  don't  think  that 
the   sermon  itself  was  at  all  open  to  Mr.  Kingsley's 

^  Sermons  on  Subjects  of  the  Day,  p.  306. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.  MARY'S.  123 

interpretation  of  it;  but  I  do  think  that,  considered 
as  an  historical  apology  for  the  ecclesiastical  type  of 
character,  it  did  need  much  stronger  admissions  than 
any  which  Newman  gaye  as  to  the  perversions  to  which 
that  type  of  character  has  shown  itself  to  be  liable.  As 
a  defence  of  the  humility  and  meekness  of  the  primitive 
Church,  it  is  very  effective  to  say,  as  Newman  did  of  her 
bitter  enemies,  "  It  is  easy  to  insinuate,  when  men  are 
malevolent,  that  those  who  triumph  through  meekness 
have  affected  the  meekness  to  secure  the  triumph,"  but 
men  who  were  not  malevolent  have  made  that  remark 
concerning  many  of  the  ecclesiastical  politicians  for 
whose  indirectness  of  policy  it  was  supposed — perhaps 
mistakenly — that  this  sermon  was  intended  to  offer  an 
apology.  Perhaps  the  sermon  would  have  answered 
its  purpose  better  if  a  franker  confession  had  been 
made,  that  Churchmen,  in  obeying  their  Lord's  com- 
mand, have  been  apt  to  mingle  a  good  deal  too  much 
of  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  with  a  good  deal  too 
little  of  the  harmlessness  of  the  dove ;  and  that  when 
they  have  done  so,  they  have  evolved  a  type  of  char- 
acter inferior  instead  of  superior  to  the  worldly  character 
which  devotes  itself  to  the  same  order  of  affairs. 

On  the  whole,  I  think  that  Newman's  extraordinary 
power  in  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  was  due  to  the 
wonderful  blending  of  the  reality  of  his  insight  into 
human  life  and  character  with  his  absolute  faith  in 
revelation  and  the  spiritual  world  which  that  revel- 
ation opened  to  his  view,  heightened  as  these  great 
gifts  were  by  a  nature  singularly  sensitive  to  the  pangs 
of  lacerated  feelings  and  wounded  affections,  and  sub- 
jected to  a  severe  strain  by  his  gradual  discovery  that 
his    ideal   of   the    Christian    character   and    Christian 


124  CAKDINAL  NEWMAN. 

doctrine  was  undermining  his  position  as  a  Christian 
teacher,  and  demanding  from  him  the  one  act  of  self- 
denial  which  he  had  long  taught  himself  to  regard  as 
one  of  deliberate  disobedience  to  the  spiritual  authority 
which  he  regarded  as  speaking  to  him  with  God's  own 
voice.  The  great  difference  between  his  style  as  an 
Anglican  teacher  and  his  style  as  a  Catholic  teacher, 
was  due  to  the  profound  pathos  of  his  situation  in 
the  former  position,  and  the  comparative  freedom  of 
his  situation  in  the  latter.  In  both  positions  the 
delicacy  and  tenderness  of  his  nature  made  themselves 
powerfully  felt,  but  in  the  former  he  spoke  like  one 
repressing  the  anxious  forebodings  of  his  own  heart, 
in  the  latter  like  one  pouring  out  the  pity  of  an 
.  enfranchised  spirit. 

As  University  preacher  Newman  perhaps  hardly 
exerted  so  characteristic  an  influence  as  he  did  in  the 
sermons  in  which  he  strove  chiefly  to  drive  home  the 
significance  of  the  Christian  revelation.  His  University 
sermons  may  be  said  to  be  more  or  less  attempts  to 
discover  the  true  relation  of  Reason  to  Faith,  and  great 
as  these  sermons  are,  abounding  in  passages  of  the 
highest  power,  and  here  and  there  of  great  eloquence, 
beauty,  and  pathos,  they  are  not  so  saturated  with  the 
nature  of  the  man,  as  the  "  parochial "  sermons  and  the 
sermons  on  Sitl>jects  of  the  Day.  Still  the  great  series 
discussing  the  relation  of  Faith  to  Reason  is  a  very 
memorable  series,  and  the  wonderful  sermon  on  The 
Theory  of  Development  in  Religious  Doctrine  with  which 
it  closes,  is  probably  among  the  noblest  ever  composed 
on  what  may  be  called  the  method  of  revelation.  The 
whole  series  is  full  of  new  light  on  a  subject  which  has 
been  frequently  treated  since,  the  relation  of  implicit  to 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.    MARY'S.  125 

explicit  reason,  though  seldom  with  anything  like  New- 
man's power  and  lucidity.  Indeed,  the  subject  interested 
him  so  deeply  that  he  took  it  up  again  five-and-twenty 
years  after  his  conversion  in  his  Grammar  of  Assent. 
Newman  started  with  an  exposition  of  the  mistaken 
idea  which  the  sceptical  world  usually  attaches  to  the 
word  "Faith,"  as  a  species  of  weak  and  superstitious 
apology  for  reason,  foundationless  belief  which  contents 
itself  rather  with  an  excuse  for  credulity  than  with 
anything  that  deserves  the  name  of  evidence.  A  rustic 
will  sometimes  adduce  as  evidence  of  some  strange 
event,  that  the  tree  under  the  shade  of  which  it 
happened  is  still  to  be  seen  growing,  and  that  he 
himself  has  seen  it,  or  that  the  very  room  in  which  it 
took  place  is  known  to  him.  Faith,  according  to  New- 
man, is  usually  supposed  by  the  world  to  be  an  imbecile 
reason  of  such  a  kind  as  this.  But  in  reality,  he 
argued,  faith  has  its  origin  in  eagerness  to  believe 
that  for  which  the  evidence  is  more  antecedent  and 
presumptive  than  a  posteriori  and  inductive.  But  such 
an  eagerness  to  believe  may  be,  and  often  is,  a  perfectly 
just  and  in  the  highest  sense  reasonable  eagerness, 
where  it  is  the  outcome  of  the  highest  tendencies  which 
are  implicit,  or  folded  up  in  man's  nature ;  whereas  it  is 
an  unjust  and  unreasonable  eagerness  to  believe,  where 
it  is  the  outcome  of  the  poorer  and  baser  part  of  his 
nature;  the  difference  being  that  in  the  former  case 
the  eagerness  to  believe  proceeds  from  what  is  supreme 
over  man,  or  divine,  while  in  the  latter  case  it  proceeds 
from  what  is  selfish  and  tainted  in  man,  and  far  from 
having  any  authority  to  secure  our  submission.  But 
apart  from  the  question  of  moral  predisposition,  New- 
man  was    concerned    to   show   also    how  readily   the 


126  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

sceptical  world  itself  does  trust  these  prepossessions, 
which  it  regards  as  merely  superstitions  in  the  region 
of  religion,  when  they  are  the  prepossessions  of  a  great 
practical  genius,  as,  for  example,  a  military  genius  like 
Napoleon's.  "Consider,"  he  said,  "the  preternatural 
sagacity  with  which  a  great  general  knows  what  his 
friends  and  enemies  are  about,  and  what  will  be  the 
final  result,  and  where,  of  their  combined  movements, 
and  then  say  whether,  if  he  were  required  to  argue  the 
matter  in  word  or  on  paper,  all  his  most  brilliant  con- 
jectures might  not  be  refuted,  and  all  his  producible 
reasons  exposed  as  illogical."  ^  In  other  words,  such  a 
general  reasons  by  the  antecedent  presumptions  of  the 
case,  and  the  least  straw  of  evidence  is  sufficient  to  con- 
firm these  presumptions,  whereas,  if  he  had  gone  by  the 
explicit  evidence  alone,  he  could  not  have  ventured  to 
draw  any  confident  conclusions  at  all.  Whence  does 
such  a  general  gather  his  antecedent  presumptions  ? 
Evidently  from  all  his  previous  studies,  and  partly  even 
from  all  his  previous  reveries  and  imaginations  as  to 
the  proper  mode  of  conducting  campaigns,  just  as  a 
first-rate  mountaineer,  to  use  another  of  Newman's  illus- 
trations,2  uses  all  his  previous  experience  in  climbing 
when  he  scales  a  steep  cliff,  using  his  eyes,  his  hands, 
his  feet,  his  physical  endowments  of  every  kind,  in 
some  combination  of  which  he  cannot  in  the  least 
analyze  the  proportions,  and  one  probably  which  no 
one  else  could  imitate,  to  achieve  a  feat  which  no  one 
else  could  perform. 

"And  such  is  the  way  in  which  all  men,  gifted  or 
not  gifted,  commonly  reason — not  by  rule,  but  by  an 

^  University  Sermons,  pp.  217,  218  ;  3rd  edition,  1872. 
2  Ibid.  p.  257. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MAKY'S.  127 

inward  faculty."  Newman  held  that  this  especially 
applies  to  the  way  in  which  faith  outstrips  what  is 
ordinarily  called  evidence.  Just  as  a  man  who  knows 
another  intimately  will  judge  by  the  slightest  grain  of 
evidence  undecipherable  to  any  one, else  what  was  his 
motive  and  what  his  line  of  conduct  under  given  cir- 
cumstances, though  the  actual  story  of  what  he  did 
may  be  only  half  extant,  so  the  prophet  or  apostle  un- 
derstood what  God  was  doing  before  any  one  else  un- 
derstood it,  and  so  the  disciple  of  that  prophet  or 
apostle  imderstood  what  his  Master  intended  when  the 
outside  world  was  in  perplexity  and  amazement.  And 
so  too  in  all  the  moral  experience  of  life,  the  quick  and 
vigilant  conscience  finds  the  clue  to  God's  purposes 
more  easily  and  with  more  certainty  than  the  slow  and 
sluggish  conscience ;  and  what  one  man  rejects  as 
evidence  altogether,  and  deems  too  trivial  to  be  of  any 
account,  except  to  the  superstitious,  and  from  his  point 
of  view  rightly  so  rejects,  another  man  with  a  different 
moral  experience  accepts  eagerly  as  for  him  absolutely 
convincing,  and  rightly  so  accepts.  In  short,  New- 
man maintains  that  implicit  reasoning  is  a  far  more 
active  and  useful  agent  in  actual  life  than  explicit 
reasoning,  and  accounts  for  a  great  deal  more  of  the 
practical  wisdom  of  life.  Courts  of  justice  must  go 
chiefly  by  explicit  evidence,  as  they  are  not  familiar 
with  the  ways  and  motives  of  those  with  whom  they 
deal ;  but  it  would  be  as  foolish  for  men  who  do  know 
these  ways  and  motives  to  trammel  themselves  with 
legal  rules,  as  it  would  for  Marlborough  or  Napoleon 
to  trammel  themselves  with  the  formal  principles  of 
strategy,  though  their  own  minds  contained  not  only 
all  that  had  yielded  these  formal  principles,  but  a  great 


128  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

deal  more  beside.  And  especially  Newman  maintains, 
that  in  judging  of  revelation  man  must  guide  himself, 
if  he  would  guide  himself  rightly,  more  by  the  craving 
and  love  for  God,  which  is  God's  witness  in  the  heart, 
than  by  the  external  evidence  of  the  supernatural  as 
it  is  presented  to  him  in  treatises  on  Christian  evidence. 
Newman  took  up  the  same  theme  in  the  great 
University  sermon  on  "  The  Theory  of  Development  in 
Religious  Doctrine."  It  was  preached  in  February  1843, 
and  was,  I  suppose,  the  last  University  sermon  preached 
by  him  in  the  University  pulpit,  though  he  remained 
an  Anglican,  nominally  at  least,  during  the  two  years 
of  his  retirement  at  Littlemore.  In  that  sermon  he 
starts  virtually  from  the  maxim  which,  as  he  tells  us,  he 
learnt  from  Scott,  the  author  of  the  commentaries,  that 
the  true  test  of  life  is  growth,  but  he  applies  it  in 
a  somewhat  novel  way  to  the  dogmatic  development 
of  the  impressions  derived  from  revelation.  "  Reason," 
he  said,  "  has  not  only  submitted,  it  has  ministered  to 
faith ;  it  has  illustrated  its  documents ;  it  has  raised 
illiterate  peasants  into  philosophers  and  divines ;  it  has 
elicited  a  meaning  from  their  words  which  their  imme- 
diate hearers  little  suspected.  Stranger  surely  is  it 
that  St.  John  should  be  a  theologian  than  that  St. 
Peter  should  be  a  prince.  This  is  a  phenomenon  proper 
to  the  gospel  and  a  note  of  divinity.  Its  half  sentences, 
its  overflowings  of  language,  admit  of  development ;  they 
have  a  life  in  them  which  shows  itself  in  progress ;  a 
truth  which  has  the  token  of  consistency;  a  reality 
which  is  fruitful  in  resources ;  a  depth  which  extends 
into  mystery;  for  they  are  representations  of  what  is 
actual,  and  has  a  definite  location,  and  necessary  bear- 
ing, and  a  meaning  in  the  great  system  of  things,  and 


NEWMAN  AT   ST.   MARY'S.  129 

a  harmony  in  what  it  is,  and  a  compatibihty  in  what 
it  involves.  What  form  of  Paganism  can  furnish  a 
parallel?  What  philosopher  has  left  his  words  to 
posterity  as  a  talent  which  could  be  put  to  usury,  as 
a  mine  which  could  be  wrought?  Here  too  is  the 
badge  of  heresy ;  its  dogmas  are  unfruitful ;  it  has  no 
theology,  so  far  forth  as  it  is  heresy  it  has  none. 
Deduct  its  remnant  of  Catholic  theology  and  what 
remains  ?     Polemics,  explanations,  protests."  ^ 

Newman  goes  on  to  explain  the  process  by  which  the 
impressions  of  God  derived  from  the  inspired  teachers  of 
the  Church  took  hold  of  the  mind  of  the  first  ages  and 
worked  upon  them — often  without  getting  any  explicit 
acknowledgment  for  years  or  even  centuries  together, — 
yet  showing  their  vitality  at  least  by  the  decision  with 
which  they  rejected  and  shook  off  misconceptions  in- 
consistent with  their  full  development.  "  The  Christian 
mind,"  he  says,  "  reasons  out  a  series  of  dogmatic  state- 
ments one  from  another,"  but  reasons  them  out  "  not 
from  those  statements  taken  in  themselves  as  logical 
propositions,  but  as  being  itself  enlightened  and  (as  if) 
inhabited  by  that  sacred  impression  which  is  prior  to 
them,  which  acts  as  a  regulating  principle,  ever  present, 
upon  the  reasoning,  and  without  which  no  one  has  any 
warrant  to  reason  at  all.  Such  sentences  as  '  the  Word 
was  God,'  or  as  ^  the  Only-begotten  Son  who  is  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Father,'  or  'the  Word  was  made  flesh,' 
or  'the  Holy  Ghost  which  proceedeth  from  the  Father,' 
are  not  a  mere  letter  which  we  may  handle  by  the 
rules  of  art  at  our  own  will,  but  august  tokens  of  most 
simple,   ineffable,  adorable   facts,  embraced,  enshrined 

1  Uiiiversity  Sermonsj  pp.  317,  318. 

K 


130  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

according  to  its  measure  in  the  believing  mind."^ 
Thus  "  Scripture  begins  a  series  of  developments  which 
it  does  not  finish,"  but  it  records  these  first  living  im- 
pressions, while  the  developed  dogmas  do  but  mark 
out,  as  it  were,  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  do  so,  the  real 
range,  depth,  and  character  of  those  impressions. 

The  multiplicity  of  propositions  implies  no  multiplicity 
of  dogmas,  but  resembles  rather  the  multiplicity  of 
observations  taken  in  the  trigonometrical  survey  of  any 
country,  of  any  conspicuous  landmark  or  mountain-top. 
These  imply,  of  course,  no  complexity  in  that  landmark, 
but  only  that  it  is  necessary  to  determine  the  bearing 
upon  it  of  all  the  other  points  from  which  it  can  be 
seen.  Observations  are  added  to  observations  not  with 
the  view  of  multiplying  landmarks,  but  with  the 
view  of  making  it  quite  clear  how  other  things  stand 
with  relation  to  it.  And  so  propositions  are  added  to 
propositions  in  the  definition  of  dogma,  not  because 
the  Divine  reality  described  is  itself  complex,  but  be- 
cause being  so  much  beyond  and  above  us,  it  is  not 
easy  to  fix  our  thoughts  with  regard  to  it  without 
describing  the  impressions  it  makes  upon  us  from  a 
great  many  different  points  of  view. 

But  then  Newman  raises  the  abstract  difficulty,  how 
it  is  possible  for  the  infinite  Being  to  make  on  a  finite 
being  any  adequate  impression  that  will  reveal  His 
nature  at  all.  If  God's  nature  is  infinite,  the  impression 
or  idea  it  produces  within  us  must  be  infinite  also  in 
order  to  be  adequate;  and  if  our  nature  is  finite,  no 
impression  or  idea  to  which  it  is  adequate  can  be  other 
than  finite.     And  to  a  certain  extent  Newman  concedes 

*  University  Sermons,  p.  334 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  131 

this,  since  Scripture  itself  treats  our  human  knowledge 
even  of  God  as  He  is  revealed  as  necessarily  inadequate, 
as  the  knowledge  obtained  by  gazing  through  a  glass 
darkly,  and  not  as  it  will  be  when  we  are  face  to  face ; 
but  he  maintains  that  though  it  may  be  inadequate, 
it  need  not  be  without  that  real  correspondence  with 
the  Divine  nature  which  constitutes  real  knowledge. 
Just  as  geometry  and  the  higher  analysis  are  totally 
different,  and  each  in  their  way  inadequate  methods 
of  elaborating  the  same  necessary  truths,  one  failing  to 
cover  the  ground  at  one  point,  the  other  falling  short 
at  another  point,  and  yet  both  agreeing  substantially  in 
their  results,  and  each  enabling  us  to  push  our  real 
knowledge  of  space  further,  so  he  says  theology  by 
calling  in  symbol  and  metaphor,  and  making  use  now 
of  one  part  of  our  nature,  now  of  another,  by  stimulating 
our  conscience,  exalting  the  emotions,  and  stretching 
our  intellectual  grasp,  gives  us  knowledge  of  the 
real  correspondence  between  God's  nature  and  ours. 
And  then  he  goes  on  to  that  noble  passage,  probably 
unequalled  in  its  kind  since  the  writings  of  St. 
Augustine,  in  which  he  dwells  upon  the  wonders  of 
musical  expression,  as  suggesting  that  in  spite  of  its 
limitations,  human  nature  contains  within  itself  ele- 
ments capable  of  expansion  into  infinite  and  eternal 
meanings  : — "  There  are  seven  notes  in  the  scale  ; 
make  them  fourteen,  yet  what  a  slender  outfit  for 
so  vast  an  enterprise  !  What  science  brings  so  much 
out  of  so  little  ?  Out  of  what  poor  elements  does 
some  great  master  in  it  create  his  new  world  ! 
Shall  we  say  that  all  this  exuberant  inventiveness  is 
a  mere  ingenuity  or  trick  of  art,  like  some  game  or 
fashion  of  the  day,  without  reality,  without  meaning? 


132  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

We  may  do  so,  and  then  perhaps  we  shall  also  account 
the  science  of  theology  to  be  a  matter  of  words  ;  yet  as 
there  is  a  divinity  in  the  theology  of  the  Church, 
which  those  who  feel  cannot  communicate,  so  is  there 
also  in  the  wonderful  creation  of  sublimity  and  beauty 
of  which  I  am  speaking.  To  many  men  the  very  names 
which  the  science  employs  are  utterly  incomprehensible. 
To  speak  of  an  idea  or  a  subject  seems  to  be  fanciful 
or  trifling;  to  speak  of  the  views  which  it  opens  upon 
us  to  be  childish  extravagance ;  yet  is  it  possible  that 
that  inexhaustible  evolution  and  disposition  of  notes, 
so  rich  yet  so  simple,  so  intricate  yet  so  regulated,  so 
various  yet  so  majestic,  should  be  a  mere  sound  which 
is  gone  and  perishes  ?  Can  it  be  that  these  mysterious 
stiiTinors  of  heart,  and  keen  emotions,  and  strangle 
yearnings  after  we  know  not  what,  and  awful  im- 
pressions from  we  know  not  whence,  should  be  wrought 
in  us  by  what  is  unsubstantial,  and  comes  and  goes, 
and  begins  and  ends  in  itself  ?  It  is  not  so ;  it  cannot 
be.  No ;  they  have  escaped  from  some  higher  sphere  ; 
they  are  the  outpourings  of  eternal  harmony  in  the 
medium  of  created  sound;  they  are  echoes  from  our 
Home ;  they  are  the  voice  of  Angels,  or  the  magnificat 
of  Saints,  or  the  living  laws  of  Divine  government,  or 
the  Divine  Attributes;  something  are  they  beside 
themselves,  which  we  cannot  compass,  which  we  cannot 
utter — though  mortal  man,  and  he  perhaps  not  other- 
wise distinguished  above  his  fellows,  has  the  gift  of 
eliciting  them."  ^ 

And    then    passing    into    that    idealistic    mood    of 
thought  to  which  he  had  been  prone  from  his  earliest 

^  University  Sermons,  pp.  346-7,  3rd  edition. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MARY'S.  133 

boyhood,  Newman  suggests  once  more  that,  knowing 
so  little  as  we  do  of  the  ultimate  causes  even  of  our 
sensations  and  perceptions,  it  may  well  be  that  the 
whole  structure  of  the  universe,  physical  no  less  than 
intellectual  and  moral,  is  but  a  system  intended  to 
educate  the  spirit  into  a  right  frame  of  mind  towards 
the  moral  and  spiritual  realities  of  the  universe,  indeed 
to  inspire  us  with  trust — trust  that  the  knowledge 
which  we  gain  from  it,  whether  it  be  greater  or  less, 
whether  it  be  exact  or  vague,  whether  it  tell  us 
precisely  what  we  suppose  it  to  tell  us,  or  only  brings 
our  minds  as  closely  as  they  admit  of  being  brought 
into  correspondence  with  the  ultimate  realities  of 
things,  is  the  best  that  we  could  have  in  our  present 
state,  and  may  be  implicitly  depended  on  to  do  for  us 
all  that  knowledge  could  do  until  *'the  day  break 
and  the  shadows  flee  away."  In  other  words,  if  the 
theological  conceptions  provided  by  revelation  are  to  be 
regarded  as  purely  relative,  and  as  adapted  more  or  less 
to  our  finite  apprehension,  yet  so  far  from  there  being 
any  reason  to  think  of  them  as  less  intrinsically  true 
than  the  affirmations  of  our  senses  and  our  judgments 
concerning  sensible  objects,  there  is  not  a  little  reason 
to  suppose  that  while  all  are  relative  to  our  capacities, 
these  truths  of  revelation  are  those  which  approximate 
more  closely  to  absolute  truths  than  any  others  within 
our  reach.  The  highest  creeds  are  doubtless  unworthy 
of  the  Divine  verities,  but  they  contain  the  fullest 
measure  of  truth  of  which  our  nature  admits.  They 
contain  the  truth  "as  far  as  they  go,  and  under  the 
conditions  of  thought  which  human  feebleness  imposes. 
It  is  true  that  God  is  without  beginning,  if  eternity 
may  worthily  be   considered   to   imply  succession;  in 


134  CARDINAL  NEWMAK". 

every  place  if  He  who  is  a  Spirit  can  have  relations 
with  place.  It  is  right  to  speak  of  His  Being  and 
Attributes,  if  He  be  not  rather  superessential ;  it  is 
true  to  say  that  He  is  wise  or  powerful,  if  we  may 
consider  Him  other  than  the  most  simple  Unity.  He  is 
truly  Three  if  He  is  truly  One ;  He  is  truly  One  if  the 
idea  of  Him  falls  under  earthly  number.  He  has  a 
triple  personality  in  the  sense  in  which  the  Infinite  can 
be  understood  to  have  Personality  at  all."  ^ 

And  perhaps  this  is  the  place  to  say  that  I  think 
Newman  in  his  idealism  emphasizes  too  much  the 
unknowable  aspect  of  the  Divine  nature.  Surely  he 
insists  too  much  on  the  pure  mysteries  revealed  to  us, 
and  too  little  on  that  wonderful  character  of  God 
displayed  in  the  gospels,  which  is  the  consummation 
of  all  the  teaching  of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  and 
which  is  hardly  to  be  classed  under  conceptions,  which 
either  assert  or  deny  loundary  at  all.  Is  there  not 
something  in  man's  character  which  simply  ignores 
quantitative  rules  and  measures?  Does  it  add  much 
to  our  conception  of  our  Lord's  human  nature  and  life 
to  speak  of  it  as  bounded  or  as  not  bounded  by  finite 
limitations?  Is  it  not  like  attributing  colour  to  a 
thought,  or  locality  to  an  idea  ?  However  difficult  it 
may  be  for  us  to  understand  the  relation  of  the  Eternal 
Father  to  the  Eternal  Son,  and  of  both  to  the  Eternal 
Spirit,  and  of  all  three  Divine  Persons  to  the  One 
God,  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  understand  that  God, 
whether  Father,  Son,  or  Spirit,  or  the  unity  of  the 
three,  is  manifested  in  Christ,  and  that,  in  the  singular 
combination  of  His  meekness  and   His  austerity,  His 

1  University  Sermons,  p.  356. 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.  MARY'S.  135 

mercy  and  His  wrath,  His  patience  and  His  unyielding- 
ness, His  resolve  to  shed  blessing  on  evil  and  good 
alike,  and  His  unshrinking  recognition  that  nevertheless 
there  are  those  who  transform  their  best  blessings  into 
sentences  of  condemnation  on  themselves,  we  get  a 
glimpse  which  cannot  deceive  us  of  the  true  creative 
spirit,  a  glimpse  which  is  none  the  less  true-'tliough  we 
are  in  apprehension  limited,  and  He  unlimited.  It 
f  seems  to  me  that  Newman  might  have  insisted  more 
than  he  has  done  on  the  absolute  character  of  the 
moral  and  spiritual  revelation  given  us  in  the  life  of 
Christ;  and  that  it  is  more  because  this  revelation 
cannot  stand  alone,  without  some  clear  glimpse  of  how 
the  same  being  can  have  been  both  God  and  man, 
that  what  he  insists  on  as  the  dogmatic  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  has  come  to  be  of  the  essence  of  revealed  y 
truth. 

No  one  who  knows  Newman's  writings  well  can  doubt 
for  a  moment  that  from  first  to  last  the  conviction  that 
all  the  true  light  of  the  world  is  to  be  found  in  reve- 
lation has  dominated  his  thoughts.  But  I  think  he 
has  insisted  a  good  deal  more  than  he  need  have  done 
on  the  subordinate  difficulties  before  which  the  human 
mind  reels,  and  a  good  deal  less  than  he  need  on  the 
commanding  truths,  in  the  warmth  of  which  the  human 
mind  expands.  Admit  that  there  are  economies,  admit 
that  there  are  adaptations,  admit  that  there  are 
symbolic  elements  in  theology  which  are  at  best  only 
the  nearest  approximations  to  the  truth  of  which  finite 
minds  admit,  yet  surely  there  are  clear  rays  of  absolute 
truth,  which  are  more  than  ''economies,"  more  than 
adaptations,  more  than  symbols  of  reality,  in  the 
character  of  our  Lord.     He  Avas  like  the  sunshine  and 


136  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

the  rain  in  diffusing  his  mercy  on  the  grateful  and  the 
ungrateful  alike,  and  in  turning  the  other  clieek,  as 
Providence  in  its  wider  administration  of  human  affairs 
so  often  seems  to  do,  to  him  who  has  struck  a  passionate 
blow  at  Divine  goodness.  But  while  Christ  imper- 
sonated the  large  and  serene  benignity  of  the  Divine 
nature,  which  so  steadily  ignores  ingratitude  and  even 
insult  where  they  proceed  from  men  who  have  not  yet 
come  to  themselves,  who  have  not  realized  that  they 
are  dealing  with  an  individual  character  so  far  above 
their  own  that  their  ingratitude  and  insults  carry  no 
sting  at  all,  except  so  far  as  they  show  evil  in  them- 
selves, yet  He  impersonated  also  the  sternness  and  the 
inexorability  of  God  towards  perverted  consciences  and 
consummated  sin.  Surely  in  this  power  of  diffusing  the 
sunshine  and  dew  among  the  evil  and  the  good  alike, 
of  ignoring  importunity  and  irritability  and  exacting- 
ness  and  even  torment  with  that  calm  magnanimity  or 
even  compassion  which  our  Lord  not  only  enjoined  in 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  but  personally  exemplified 
in  the  agonies  of  the  Cross,  and  yet  of  combining  with 
all  this  supreme  Majesty  towards  human  folly  and 
pettiness  and  misdoing,  a  power  of  reproving  weakness, 
and  branding  wickedness,  and  exposing  self-deception 
such  as  only  the  inspirer  of  the  conscience  could  wield, 
we  may  justly  say  that  we  have  a  revelation  of  God 
that  is  much  more  than  a  mere  economical  adaptation 
to  human  weakness,  and  that  may  fitly  be  called  an 
unveiling  to  our  eyes  of  absolute  truth.  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  Newman,  though  he  always  insisted  on 
the  certainty  of  the  communion  between  God  and  the 
individual  soul  as  the  very  starting-point  of  revelation, 
has  conceded  too  much  to  those  who  speak  of  God  as  only 


NEWMAN  AT  ST.   MAEY'S.  137 

presenting  Himself  to  us  through  sign  and  symbol  and 
mediate  adaptations,  and  has  hardly  dwelt  enough  on 
those  aspects  of  revelation  in  which  we  see  the  very 
majesty  and  the  very  holiness  of  His  character  without 
even  a  film  to  hide  its  splendour  and  its  purity  from  y 
our  eyes. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS — TRACT  90,   AND  THE 
JERUSALEM   BISHOPRIC. 

Long  before  1841  Newman  had  found  that  the 
Tracts  for  the  Times  caused  much  alarm  in  tlie  minds 
of  steady  Anglicans,  indeed  in  some  of  those  who  were 
not  in  any  sense  of  the  word  Low  Churchmen.  In  1838 
the  then  Bishop  of  Oxford  (Dr.  Bagot)  made  some 
slisfht  animadversion  on  their  character  which  was  more 
or  less  of  the  nature  of  censure.  Newman  offered  to 
stop  them  at  once  if  his  Bishop  wished  it.  But  at  that 
time  the  Bishop  declined  to  express  any  such  wish. 
The  truth  is,  that  Newman  was  at  the  head  of  a  move- 
ment of  which,  as  he  afterwards  recognized  very 
frankly,  he  w^as  by  no  means  the  master.  It  did  not 
move  as  he  had  hoped  that  it  would  move ;  it  had  a 
law  of  its  own,  like  a  mass  of  snow  or  a  flood  once  set 
in  motion,  which  can  be  controlled  only  by  the  laws  of 
gravitation  and  by  the  general  conformation  of  the 
surface  of  the  country  over  which  it  passes.  The  Lectures 
on  Anglican  Difficulties,  published  after  Newman  became 
a  Roman  Catholic,  confessed  this  plainly ;  and  in  a  more 
biographic  form,  though  not,  I  think,  the  form  which 
the  Cardinal  w^ould  have  given  to  the  "  History  of  his 


ADVANCmQ  ESTRANGEMENTS.  139 

religious  opinions,"  if  he  had  written  it  after  the  tem- 
porary estrangement  between  himself  and  the  late 
William  George  Ward  was  at  an  end,  he  reiterated  the 
confession  in  the  autobiography.  In  the  Apologia  ^  he 
says — "While  my  old  and  true  friends  were  thus  in 
trouble  about  me,  I  suppose  they  felt  not  only  anxiety, 
but  pain,  to  see  that  I  was  gradually  surrendering  myself 
to  the  influence  of  others,  who  had  not  their  own  claims 
upon  me,  younger  men,  and  of  a  cast  of  mind  uncon- 
genial to  my  own.  A  new  school  of  thought  was  rising, 
as  is  usual  in  such  movements,  and  was  sweeping  the 
original  party  of  the  movement  aside,  and  was  taking 
its  place.  The  most  prominent  person  in  it  was  a  man 
of  elegant  genius,  of  classical  mind,  of  rare  talent  in 
literary  composition — Mr.  Oakeley." 

The  most  prominent  person  in  this  new  party  was 
certainly  not  Mr.  Oakeley,  who,  accomplished  and 
scholarly  as  he  was,  was  hardly  a  man  to  lead  a  phalanx 
which,  as  Newman  says,  "  cut  into  the  original  movement 
at  an  angle,  fell  across  its  line  of  thought,  and  then  set 
about  turning  that  line  in  its  own  direction,"  but  a 
much  more  vigorous  thinker  and  much  more  trenchant 
exponent  of  thought,  William  George  Ward.  In  the 
very  charming  and  brilliant  account  of  this  remarkable 
man's  earlier  career,  which  was  published  in  1889  by  his 
son,  Wilfrid  Ward,  we  get  such  a  picture  of  him  as  we 
have  seldom  had  painted  of  a  subordinate  leader  em- 
barked in  a  great  movement.  Without  any  of  Newman's 
clinging  affection  for  the  English  Church,  and  with  very 
little  of  his  profound  distrust  of  mere  logic,  Mr.  Ward 
exhibited  a  willingness  to  carry  Church  principles  into 

^  p.  277, 1st  edition. 


140  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

action,  and  a  certain  hilarity  in  braving  the  dismay 
which  that  willingness  produced,  that  made  him  to  a 
very  real  extent  a  thorn  in  Newman's  side,  though  Ward 
was  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  most  loyal  and  ardent 
of  Newman's  followers.  He  was  indeed  in  almost  every 
respect  a  difficult  and  restless  disciple.  He  loved  a 
certain  bareness,  not  to  say  nakedness,  both  of  logic 
and  expression,  which  stand  in  very  strong  contrast  to 
Newman's  carefully  and  delicately  shaded  studies  of  the 
many  modifying  circumstances  which  tend  to  qualify 
the  principles  he  enunciated.  Newman  speaks  of  the 
difficulty  he  found  in  dealing  with  persons  who  called  on 
him  on  purpose  to  "  pump  "  him  as  to  how  he  got  over 
this  and  the  other  difficulty  in  the  Anglican  position. 
Of  these  inveterate  pumpers  Ward  must  have  been  much 
the  ablest  and  most  indefatigable.  He  loved  just  those 
things  in  the  Roman  Catholic  tendencies  of  the  move- 
ment from  which  Newman  most  sensitively  shrank. 
He  seems  to  me  to  have  loved  best  the  most  carnal 
forms  of  the  Roman  Catholic  devotions,  just  those  which 
repelled  Newman,  because  they  put  in  a  broad  popular 
form  what  Newman  could  only  endure  when  veiled  in 
an  abstract  principle.  Ward  heartily  admired  what  I 
have  elsewhere  called  the  "glare"  of  the  continental 
piety.  To  dwell  on  and  even  exaggerate  the  Roman 
Catholic  view  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Church  was  his 
delight.  The  cultus  of  the  saints  was  no  trouble  to  him. 
The  stress  laid  upon  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  filled 
him  with  exultation.  He  held  "  Justification  by  Faith  " 
to  be  almost  a  diabolic  doctrine,  and  asked  Mr.  Oakeley 
whether  it  was  not  true  that  Melancthon  was  less 
"  detestable "  than  most  of  the  Reformers.  To  such 
a  disciple  the   Via  Media  was  like  a  strait  waistcoat. 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  141 

And  he  delighted  in  asking  Newman  questions  which 
were  difficult  to  answer  in  any  spirit  loyal  to  that 
Via  Media  view  of  the  Anglican  position,  and  then 
in  retailing  far  and  wide  the  concessions  to  his  own 
difficulties  which  he  had  obtained. 

There  was  a  singular  naimU  about  Mr.  Ward,  a 
glee  in  either  giving  or  receiving  a  severe  intellectual 
cudgelling,  which  rendered  it  almost  impossible  to  take 
offence  at  his  hard  hitting.  He  was  the  most  bland 
of  logical  swordsmen,  and  would  smile  as  sweetly  if 
his  view  were  denounced  as  wicked,  as  he  would  when 
declaring  the  view  of  his  opponent  to  be  an  utterly 
abominable  though  logical  inference  from  premisses 
which  no  healthy  conscience  would  ever  have  admitted. 
Far  from  loving,  as  Newman  did,  the  sobriety  of  the 
English  Church,  and  finding  in  its  studious  moderation 
a  note  of  divinity,  Ward  loved  all  the  ostensibilities,  not 
to  say  the  ostentations,  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  as  it  had 
developed  itself  in  its  war  with  the  world,  the  haughty  '^ 
claim  of  its  priesthood  to  override  worldly  dignities,  the 
effusion  and  the  fame  of  its  saints,  the  multiplicity 
of  its  miracles,  the  pageantry  of  its  pilgrimages,  the 
pride  of  its  humility,  the  military  grandeur  of  its  organ- 
ization, and  the  calm  defiance  with  which  it  treated  the 
imputation  of  superstition  and  of  ignorant  credulity.^ 
No  doubt  he  was  one  of  the  most  exacting  of  the 
many  followers  of  whom  Newman  repeats  that  they  kept 
saying  to  him,  "  What  will  you  make  of  the  Articles  ?  " 
For  the  Articles  not  only  specially  excited  Ward's 
doctrinal  detestation  of  the  Lutheran  view  of  faith, 
but  excited  also  that  dislike  of  compromise,  that  pro- 
found contempt  for  judicious  trimming,  which  was  one 
of  the  most  marked  of  his  characteristics,  and  which 


142  CAEDTNAL   NEWMAN. 

soon  carried  him  far  beyond  Newman  and  his  ultra- 
montanism,  when  once  they  had  joined  the  Roman 
CathoUc  Church. 

Newman  declares  with  obvious  truth  in  his  Apologia, 
that  he  himself  did  not  share  the  apprehensions  which 
the  question,  "What  will  you  make  of  the  Articles?" 
implied.  It  was  not  in  the  least  his  own  sense  of 
difficulty — as  it  usually  had  been — which  led  him  to 
deal  with  the  Articles  in  the  famous  Tract  90 ;  it  was 
rather  "  the  restlessness  actual  and  prospective  of  those 
who  neither  liked  the  Via  Media,  nor  my  strong 
judgment  against  Rome,"  and  of  these  Ward  was  much 
the  most  active  and  the  most  vivid.  "  I  had  been  en- 
joined, I  think  by  my  Bishop,  to  keep  these  men  straight, 
and  I  wished  so  to  do ;  but  their  tangible  difficulty  was 
subscription  to  the  Articles ;  and  thus  the  question  of 
the  Articles  came  before  me.  It  was  thrown  in  our 
teeth, '  How  can  you  manage  to  sign  the  Articles  ?  They 
are  directly  against  Rome.'  '  Against  Rome  ! '  I  made 
answer.  '  What  do  you  mean  by  Rome  ? '  and  then  I 
proceeded  to  make  distinctions,"  -^  of  which  the  upshot 
was  Tract  90,  the  tract  which  practically  determined 
that  the  goal  of  what  Newman  calls  "  The  Providential 
Movement  of  1833,"  was  not  to  be  in  a  Branch  Church. 
Newman  held  (1)  that  the  Articles  were  really  drawn  up 
against  the  political  supremacy  of  the  Pope  much  more 
than  against  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and 
he  himself  did  not  favour  the  supremacy  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rome  over  foreign  Churches.  (2)  He  held  that  the 
Articles  were  expressly  intended  by  the  Government  of 
the  day  which  prepared  them,  to  gain  over  the  moderate 

^  Apologia,  pp.  158-9. 


ADVANCING  ESTKANGEMENTS.  143 

Romanists,  and  that  they  were  therefore  intentionally 
so  drawn  up  that  "  their  bark  should  prove  worse  than 
their  bite."  ^  And  (3)  he  insisted  that  in  recognizing 
the  doctrine  of  the  Homilies  as  "  godly  and  wholesome," 
and  insisting  on  subscription  to  that  proposition,  they 
virtually  declared  themselves  Roman  Catholic  in  spirit, 
for  they  treat  several  of  the  Apocryphal  books  as  in  the 
highest  sense  authoritative;  they  treat  the  Primitive 
Church  for  nearly  seven  hundred  years  as  quite  pure ; 
they  recognize  six  councils  as  allowed  and  received  by 
all  Christians ;  they  speak  of  the  Bishops  of  the  first 
eight  centuries  as  of  good  authority  and  credit  with  the 
people ;  they  speak  of  many  of  the  Fathers  as  endowed 
with  the  Holy  Ghost ;  they  quote  from  the  Fathers  the 
teaching  that  the  Lord's  Supper  is  "  the  salve  of  immor- 
tality, the  sovereign  preservative  against  death ; "  they 
speak  of  the  meat  received  in  the  Sacrament  as  an  "  in- 
visible meat  and  a  ghostly  substance ; "  they  speak  of 
Ordination  and  Matrimony  as  Sacraments,  and  expressly 
say  that  there  are  other  Sacraments  besides  Baptism 
and  the  Lord's  Supper;  they  speak  of  "  alms-deeds  "  as 
purging  the  soul  from  sin ;  they  talk  of  fasting,  used 
with  prayer,  as  of  great  efficacy  with  God.  All  these 
doctrines  are  then  promulgated  in  a  book,  whose  general 
teaching  is  declared  in  the  Articles  to  be  godly  and 
wholesome,  so  that  it  is  hardly  possible  that  they  were 
really  meant  to  effect  a  complete  breach  with  Roman 
Catholic  doctrine.  And  (4)  Newman  urged  that  when 
the  Articles  were  drawn  up  the  Council  of  Trent  was 
not  over,  and  its  decrees  were  not  promulgated,  and 
this  showed  that  the  Articles  were  not  directed  against 

1  Apologia,  p.  163. 


144  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

the  Council  of  Trent,  but  against  something  else.  In- 
deed the  Homilies,  which  are  the  best  commentaries  on 
the  Articles,  being  recommended  to  us  by  the  Articles, 
teach  us  clearly  enough  what  the  object  of  the  compilers 
of  the  Articles  was,  namely,  to  get  rid  of  the  popular 
corruptions  practically  sanctioned  in  the  Church  of 
Rome,  though  not  for  the  most  part  supported  by  any 
dogmatic  decrees.  Again,  (5)  the  Convocation  of  1571 
enjoined  that  nothing  should  be  preached  except  what 
could  be  proved  from  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  and 
what  "  the  Catholic  Fathers  and  ancient  Bishops  have 
collected  from  that  very  doctrine."  Here  is  clear  evidence, 
in  Newman's  opinion,  that  the  Convocation  which 
imposed  the  Articles  was  very  jealous  of  any  attempt 
to  break  with  Catholic  antiquity.  No  wonder  that 
Newman  believed  that  wherever  the  Articles  are  vague, 
and  do  not  define  what  they  mean,  their  vagueness  was 
intentional,  and  was  to  be  interpreted  in  the  most  com- 
prehensive and  not  in  the  most  narrow  and  exclusive 
sense. 

But  what  Newman  did  not  sufficiently  consider  was, 
that  the  Anglican  Church;  partly  in  consequence  of 
its  alliance  with  the  State,  and  the  consequent  loss  of 
individual  energy,  and  partly  in  consequence  of  the 
temper  of  the  people  among  whom  it  ministered,  and 
their  inclinations  to  distrust  Rome  both  for  its  political 
and  for  its  hierarchical  tendencies,  had  become  identified 
more  and  more  in  popular  estimation  with  the  Protestant 
aspects  of  its  teaching,  and  less  and  less  with  the  views 
dear  to  the  moderate  Romanizers,  whom  the  ecclesiastical 
authors  of  the  Articles  had  felt  so  anxious  a  desire  to 
win.  The  prevalent  impression  certainly  was  that  the 
Articles  had  effected  a  breach  with  Rome,  and  though 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  145 

there  was  plenty  of  room  for  a  sincere  interpretation 
of  them  in  Newman's  sense,  there  can  be  no  doubt  at 
all  that  to  the  world  at  large  that  interpretation  was 
a  shock  and  a  surprise,  and  a  clear  evidence  that  the 
aim  of  the  Tractarians  was  gradually  to  reconcile  the 
two  Churches,  one  of  which  had  been  often  denounced 
by  the  other  as  the  true  Antichrist.  Ward  at  any  rate 
hailed  Trad  90  not  so  much  as  explaining  a  legitimate 
interpretation  to  be  put  on  the  Articles,  still  less  as 
explaining  the  true  sense  in  which  they  were  conceived 
and  imposed,  but  rather  as  finding  for  them  a  non- 
natural  sense  indeed,  but  still  a  sense  not  at  all  more 
non-natural  than  that  which  would  have  to  be  put  on 
many  portions  of  the  Prayer-book  by  anybody  who 
regarded  the  natural  sense  of  the  Articles  as  expressing 
his  real  faith,  and  whose  difficulty  would  therefore  lie 
in  the  straightforward  and  candid  use  of  the  liturgy  of 
the  Church.  Ward's  view  was,  I  think,  the  true  one, 
that  either  the  Articles  must  be  strained  very  hard 
to  reconcile  them  with  the  Prayer-book,  or  the  Prayer- 
book  must  be  strained  very  hard  to  reconcile  it  with 
the  Articles,  and  that  this  being  once  admitted,  New- 
man's arguments  were  sufficient  to  justify  the  choice 
of  the  Articles  as  the  more  proper  of  the  two  docu- 
ments to  be  furnished  with  a  non-natural  meaning. 

There  was,  as  I  have  shown,  real  ground  for  suppos- 
ing that  those  who  framed  the  Articles  were  not  anxious 
to  offend  the  more  moderate  Romanists ;  there  was  / 
no  pretext  for  supposing  that  those  who  drew  up  the 
Prayer-book  were  not  genuinely  opposed  to  the  Puritan 
theology ;  so  that  if  one  of  the  two  had  to  be  wrested 
from  the  meaning  that  plain  men  would  naturally  put 
upon  it,  Ward  saw  every  reason  why  it  ought  to  be  the 

L 


146  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Articles  and  not  the  Prayer-book.  But  Newman  would 
not  so  much  as  admit  that  the  sense  he  preferred  to 
give  to  the  Articles  was  a  non-natural  sense  at  all.  I 
believe  that  he  sincerely  thought  it  the  most  natural 
sense  of  which,  all  things  considered,  they  admitted, 
and  was  astonished  and  indignant  at  the  outcry  which 
Tract  90  raised.  Ward  must  have  kicked  violently 
against  the  naturalness  of  Newman's  interpretation  of 
the  Eleventh  Article,  "that  we  are  justified  by  faith 
only,  is  a  most  wholesotne  doctrine."  This  meant,  said 
Newman,  that  we  are  justified  by  faith  only  as  being 
the  only  intoiial  instrument  of  justification,  but  not  that 
Baptism  is  not  necessary — as  of  course  he  held  it  to  be 
— as  an  external  instrument  of  justification.  Nor  does 
the  Article  exclude  even  "  works  "  as  a  means  of  justifi- 
cation, if  these  works  are  done  under  the  prompting  of 
Divine  influence,  for  it  is  Newman's  very  wholesome 
doctrine  that  there  are  Divine  influences  at  work  all 
over  the  world,  amongst  those  who  neither  have  re- 
ceived Baptism  nor  can  be  said  to  have  faith  in  any 
full  sense,  and  that  the  works  which  are  done  in  obedi- 
ence to  these  sporadic  Divine  influences  do  dispose 
men  to  receive  that  fuller  grace  which  brings  with  it 
a  justifying  faith.  "  Such,"  he  says,  "  were  Cornelius's 
alms,  fasting  and  prayers,  which  led  to  his  baptism ; " 
so  that,  according  to  Newman,  the  Eleventh  Article 
neither  makes  faith  the  sole  instrument  of  justification 
(but  only  the  sole  internal  instrument),  nor  even  the 
sole  internal  instrument  which  prepares  the  way  for 
justification,  since  works  done  in  deference  to  Divine 
promptings  prepare  the  way  for  the  gift  of  justifying 
faith. 

All  this   diplomatic   concession   to   the    doctrine   of 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  147 

Justification  by  Faith,  and  elaborate  limitation  of  it, 
was  wormwood  to  Mr.  Ward,  and  no  doubt  induced  him 
to  write  a  kind  of  defence  of  Tract  90,  which  was,  in  its 
tone,  decidedly  displeasing  to  Newman,  who  had  no  wish 
at  all  to  see  his  view  of  the  Articles  treated  as  a  mere 
pis-alle7%  excusable  only  because  on  any  other  view  of 
them  some  still  more  weighty  expression  of  the  Church's 
faith  must  have  been  sacrificed.  Still  more  questionable 
was  Newman's  mode  of  explaining  away  the  Twenty- 
second  Article  on  "  Purgatory,  Pardon,  Images,  Relics, 
and  Invocation  of  Saints,"  so  as  to  admit  all  these 
though  not  in  the  form  in  which  "  the  Romish  doc- 
trine "  admits  them.  For  example,  Invocation  of  Saints 
is,  Newman  thinks,  admissible,  so  long  as  it  is  not  the 
kind  of  invocation  proper  to  prayers  addressed  to  God. 
I  think  this  view  would  have  been  altogether  over- 
strained and  inadmissible  if  the  Books  of  Homilies  had 
not  been  sanctioned  by  the  Articles ;  but  as  these 
Books — of  which  the  English  people  virtually  know 
nothing — do  distinguish  between  invoking  the  aid  of 
angels  and  saints,,  and  giving  them  the  sort  of  worship 
"due  and  proper  unto  God,"  Newman  had  a  case  for 
insisting  on  this  distinction,  though  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  article  on  the  subject,  if  it  intended 
to  allow  that  distinction,  was  one  of  the  most  misleading 
Articles  of  Religion  ever  devised. 

On  the  whole.  Tract  90  certainly  gave  a  very  false 
impression  of  Newman's  mind  and  genius  to  the  English 
people,  and  yet  for  a  long  time  it  was  the  one  publication 
with  which  his  name  was  chiefly  associated.  Oxford  men 
indeed  knew  what  he  was  as  a  preacher,  and  how  deep 
as  well  as  justly  grounded  was  his  spiritual  influence 
over  men.     But  for  a  long  time  the  only  conception  of 


148  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

Newman  in  the  minds  of  the  English  middle-class  was 
the  conception  of  a  subtle-minded  ecclesiastical  special 
pleader,  who  could  explain  away  the  force  of  the  most 
unmistakable  language,  and  show  how  to  drive  a  coach- 
and-six  through  the  accidental  gaps  in  a  Protestant 
formula.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  nothing  less  deeply 
characteristic  of  Newman  than  Tract  90  has  ever  been 
issued  by  him.  It  was  very  far  indeed  from  an  in- 
sincere document;  it  expressed,  as  I  have  said,  what 
he  thought  to  be  tlie  almost  inevitable  interpretation 
to  be  put  on  a  far  from  straightforward  ecclesiastical 
manifesto,  looking  to  the  time  when  it  was  drawn  up, 
the  persons  on  whose  behalf  it  was  put  forth,  and  the 
Convocation  by  which  it  was  promulgated.  But  though 
Newman  really  thought  it  the  best  interpretation  of 
which  the  Articles  admitted,  that  was  only  because, 
looked  at  from  the  historical  point  of  view,  they  ad- 
mitted of  no  very  natural  or  straightforward  interpret- 
ation at  all.  And  it  is  never  a  very  pleasant  office  for 
a  man  who  is  himself  in  passionate  earnest,  as  Newman 
was,  to  take  refuge  behind  the  ambiguities  of  a  creed 
artfully  devised  to  suit  the  views  of  two  very  distinct 
parties,  whose  whole  drift  was  at  bottom  irreconcilable. 
I  have  never  quite  understood  how,  with  Newman's 
view  of  the  Church,  he  was  willing  to  belong  to  one 
which  had  gone  so  far  in  the  direction  of  superficially 
at  least  disavowing  doctrines  which  he  himself  was 
disposed  to  hold  very  sacred. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  what  has  been  de- 
scribed hundreds  of  times — the  storm  of  indignation 
which  Tract  90  aroused.  Newman,  as  he  tells  us  in 
his  Apologia,  was  quite  unprepared  for  it,  and  startled 
by  its  violence,  but  his  feeling  on  the  whole  was  one 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  149 

of  relief  that  he  was  so  distinctly  pointed  out  as  unfit 
to  retain  any  longer  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  move- 
ment. He  says  in  his  Apologia,  in  relation  to  the 
attack  upon  Tract  90,  "I  recognize"  [in  it]  "much  of 
real  religious  feeling,  much  of  honest  and  true  principle, 
much  of  straightforward,  ignorant  common -sense."  But 
his  Oxford  leadership  was  gone  for  ever.  "It  was 
simply  an  impossibility  that  I  could  say  anything 
henceforth  to  good  effect  when  I  had  been  posted  up 
by  the  marshal  on  the  buttery-hatch  of  every  College 
of  my  University,  after  the  manner  of  discommoned 
pastry-cooks;  and  when  in  every  part  of  the  country 
and  every  class  of  society,  through  every  organ  and 
occasion  of  opinion,  in  newspapers,  in  periodicals,  at 
meetings,  in  pulpits,  at  dinner-tables,  in  coffee-rooms, 
in  railway  carriages,  I  was  denounced  as  a  traitor  who 
had  laid  his  train,  and  was  detected  in  the  very  act  of 
firinof  it  as^ainst  the  time-honoured  Establishment."  ^ 

But  what  affected  Newman  more  profoundly  than  the 
popular  stir  and  indignation,  was  the  evidence  given  in 
episcopal  charges,  that  the  ecclesiastical  leaders  of  his 
Church  utterly  disowned  the  principles  which  attributed 
to  them  so  much  higher  a  function  as  the  channels  of 
Divine  grace  than  was  attributed  to  them  by  any  other 
Church  party.  "  A  bishop's  lightest  word  ex  cathedra 
is  heavy,"  he  had  written.  And  an  archbishop  an- 
swered to  the  effect,  that  neither  a  bishop's  lightest 
word  nor  his  gravest  word  is  of  any  special  account  at 
all.  "  Many  persons  look  with  considerable  interest  to 
the  declarations  on  such  matters  that  from  time  to  time 
are  put  forth  by  bishops  in  their  charges,  or  on  other 

*  Apologia^  p.  173. 


150  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

occasions.  But  on  most  of  the  points  to  which  I  have 
been  aUuding,  a  bishop's  declarations  have  no  more 
weight,  except  what  they  derive  from  his  personal 
character,  than  any  anonymous  pamphlet  would  have. 
The  points  are  mostly  sucli  as  he  has  no  official  power 
to  decide,  even  in  reference  to  his  own  diocese ;  and  as 
to  legislation  for  the  Church,  or  authoritative  declar- 
ations on  many  of  the  most  important  matters,  neither 
any  one  bishop,  nor  all  collectively,  have  any  more  right 
of  this  kind  than  the  ordinary  magistrates  have  to  take 
on  themselves  the  functions  of  Parliament."  ^ 

And  how  did  the  bishops'  charges  in  general  deal  with 
the  Tracts  ?  One  of  them  replied  in  the  words  of  the 
Homily,  "  *  Let  us  diligently  search  the  well  of  life,  and 
not  run  after  the  stinking  puddles  of  tradition  devised 
by  man's  imagination.'  A  second,  'It  is  a  subject  of 
deep  concern  that  any  of  our  body  should  prepare  men 
of  ardent  feelings  and  warm  imaginations  for  a  return 
to  the  Roman  mass-book.'  And  a  third,  *  Already  are 
the  foundations  of  apostasy  laid  ;  if  we  once  admit 
another  Gospel,  Antichrist  is  at  the  door.  I  am  full 
of  fear :  everything  is  at  stake ;  there  seems  to  be 
something  judicial  in  the  rapid  spread  of  these  opinions.* 
And  a  fourth,  '  It  is  impossible  not  to  remark  upon  the 
subtle  wile  of  the  adversary ;  it  has  been  signally  and 
unexpectedly  exemplified  in  the  present  day  by  the 
revival  of  errors  which  might  have  been  supposed  buried 
for  ever.'  And  a  fifth,  *  Under  the  specious  pretence 
of  deference  to  antiquity,  and  respect  for  primitive 
models,  the  foundations  of  our  Protestant  Church  are 
undermined  by  men  who  dwell  within   her  walls,  and 

^  Lectures  on  Anglican  Difficulties,  p.  93,  1st  edition, 


ADVANCING  ESTEANGEMENTS.  151 

those  who  sit  in  the  E/cformers'  seat  are  traducinig:  the 
Reformation.'  '  Our  glory  is  in  jeopardy/  says  a  sixth. 
'Why  all  this  tenderness  for  the  very  centre  and  core  of 
corruption  ? '  asks  a  seventh.  *  Among  other  marvels 
of  the  present  day/  says  an  eighth,  '  may  be  accounted 
the  irreverent  and  unbecoming  language  applied  to  the 
chief  promoters  of  the  Reformation  in  this  land.  The 
quick  and  extensive  propagation  of  opinions  tending  to 
exalt  the  claims  of  the  Church  and  of  the  clergy  can 
be  no  proof  of  their  soundness/  '  Reunion  with  Rome 
has  been  rendered  impossible/  says  a  ninth,  '  yet  I  am 
not  without  hope  that  more  cordial  union  may  in  time 
be  effected  among  all  Protestant  Churches/  '  Most  of 
the  bishops,'  says  a  tenth,  'have  spoken  in  terms  of 
disapproval  of  the  Tracts  for  the  Times,  and  I  certainly 
believe  the  system  to  be  most  pernicious,  and  one 
which  is  calculated  to  produce  the  most  lamentable 
schism  in  a  Church  already  fearfully  disunited.' 
*  Up  to  this  moment/  says  an  eleventh,  '  the  movement 
is  advancing  under  just  the  same  pacific  professions, 
and  the  same  imputations  are  still  cast  upon  all  who 
in  any  way  impede  its  progress.  Even  the  English 
bishops  who  have  officially  expressed  any  disapprobation 
of  the  principles  or  proceedings  of  the  party  have  not 
escaped  such  animadversions/  '  Tractarianism  is  the 
masterpiece  of  Satan,'  says  a  twelfth."  ^ 

This  was  exactly  the  sort  of  testimony  which  Newman 
wanted  to  convince  him  that  the  life  of  the  Anglican 
Church  rejected  the  teaching  of  the  Tracts,  as  every 
living  organism  will  reject  that  which  is  alien  to  it,  and 
inappropriate  for  its  nourishment. 

^  Lectures  on  Anglican  Difficulties^  pp.  92-3, 


152  CAKDINAL   NEWMAN. 

Nothing  seems  to  me  a  greater  proof  of  Newman's 
sincerity  and  fidelity  to  his  own  intellectual  convictions 
than  the  long  period  of  hesitation  through  which  he 
passed  between  1841,  when  Tract  90  was  condemned 
by  the  almost  unanimous  acclamation  of  the  Anglican 
Church,  and  1845,  when  he  joined  the  Church  of  Rome. 
Even  as  early  as  183T  he  had  received  his  first  shock 
as  to  the  tenability  of  the  Via  Media.  In  that  year 
he  was  struck  by  the  similarity  between  the  position 
of  the  Monophysites  of  the  fifth^  century — who  denied 
the  human  nature  in  Christ,  and  who  leaned  on  the 
Emperor,  just  as  the  Anglican  Church  leans  on 
the  State' — and  the  Anglicans  of  our  own  time,  who 
have  so  little  of  an  independent  doctrinal  position,  and 
who  would  have  no  popular  strength  at  all  if  they 
did  not  receive  help  from  their  connection  with  the 
State,  which  always  prefers  a  religious  party  that  cannot 
stand  alone,  that  is  not  stronger  than  itself,  to  a  religious 
party  which  has  so  clear  a  doctrinal  basis  as  to  appear 
in  no  need  of  the  sustaining  power  of  the  State.  This 
impression  Newman  got  rid  of  for  a  time,  but  it 
returned  upon  him  after  the  outbreak  against  Tract  90. 
He  had  always  ridiculed  and  denounced  the  notion  of 
taking  his  stand  on  moderation  alone.  Before  1839  he 
took  his  stand  upon  antiquity.  Between  1841  and  1845 
he  grounded  his  position  on  the  impossibility  of  joining 
a  Church  which  tolerated  so  many  popular  corruptions 
as  that  of  Rome  ;  but  he  never  ceased  to  think  and 
speak  with  scorn  of  those  who  balanced  one  admission 
against  another  without  putting  forward  one  clear  prin- 
ciple, the  men  who  held  "that  Scripture  is  the  only 
authority,  yet  that  the  Church  is  to  be  deferred  to ; 
that  faith  only  justifies,  yet  that  it  does  not  justify 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  153 

without  works;  that  grace  does  not  depend  on  the 
sacraments,  yet  is  not  given  without  them ;  that  bishops 
are  a  Divine  ordinance,  yet  those  who  have  them  not 
are  in  the  same  religious  condition  as  those  who  have." 
"  This,"  he  said,  "  is  your  safe  man,  and  the  hope  of  the 
Church ;  this  is  what  the  Church  is  sure  to  want,  not 
party  men,  but  sensible,  temperate,  sober,  well-judging 
persons,  to  guide  it  through  the  channel  of  no-meaning 
between  the  Scylla  and  Charybdis  of  Aye  and  No."  ^ 

For  while  Newman  could  rely  on  antiquity, — on  his 
belief  that  the  Roman  Church  had  departed  from  the 
faith  of  the  Apostles, — he  was  comparatively  at  ease  in 
denouncing  this  meaningless  moderation.  But  when  he 
had  convinced  himself  that  Rome  had  only  proceeded 
on  the  same  principle  in  condemning  those  who  denied 
the  reality  of  Christ's  human  nature,  on  which  she  now 
proceeds  in  condemning  the  hesitating  and  half-and- 
half  doctrine  of  the  Anglican  Church,  he  was  no  longer 
easy  in  his  mind,  and  fell  back  on  the  negative  position 
that  it  was  impossible  to  join  hands  with  a  Church 
that  tolerated  so  many  popular  frivolities,  and  that 
welcomed  the  aid  of  such  unscrupulous  controversialists. 
He  said  of  Rome  in  1840,  "  *  By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them.'  .  .  .  We  see  it  attempting  to  gain  converts 
among  us  by  unreal  representations  of  its  doctrines, 
plausible  statements,  bold  assertions,  appeals  to  the 
weakness  of  human  natiire,  to  our  fancies,  our  eccen- 
tricities, our  fears,  our  frivolities,  our  false  philosophies. 
We  see  its  agents  smiling,  and  noddino^,  and  duckinof 
to  attract  attention,  as  gipsies  make  up  to  truant  boys, 
holding  out  tales  for  the  nursery,  and  pretty  pictures, 

*  Apologiaj  p.  193. 


]54  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

and  gilt  gingerbread,  and  physic  concealed  in  jam, 
and  sugar-plums  for  good  children.  .  .  .  We  English- 
men like  manliness,  openness,  consistency,  truth.  Rome 
will  never  gain  on  us  till  she  learns  these  virtues,  and 
uses  them ;  and  then  she  may  gain  us,  but  it  will  be 
by  ceasing  to  be  what  we  now  mean  by  Kome,  by 
bavinor  a  rio-ht,  not  to  *  have  dominion  over  our  faith/ 
but  to  gain  and  possess  our  affections  in  the  bonds  of 
the  Gospel.  Till  she  ceases  to  be  what  she  practically 
is,  a  union  is  impossible  between  her  and  England ;  but 
if  she  does  reform  (and  who  can  presume  to  say  that 
so  large  a  part  of  Christendom  never  can  ?),  then  it 
will  be  our  Church's  duty  at  once  to  join  in  communion 
with  the  continental  Churches,  whatever  politicians  at 
home  may  say  to  it,  and  whatever  steps  the  civil  power 
may  take  in  consequence."  ^ 

In  July  1841  came  the  still-birth  of  a  Bishopric  of 
Jerusalem,  the  bishop  to  have  jurisdiction  over  such  other 
Protestant  congregations  as  might  desire  to  accept  the 
bishop's  authority,  and  this  without  any  condition  that 
such  Protestants  should  renounce  their  errors  and  accept 
Baptism  and  Confirmation,  where  there  was  any  doubt 
of  their  formal  baptism.  This  seemed  to  Newman  as 
decisive  an  admission  that  the  Anglican  Church  did 
not  insist  on  her  Church  principles,  as  the  repudiation 
of  Tract  90  had  been  that  she  did  insist  on  her 
Protestant  principles. 

With  reference  to  this  matter,  Newman  says  in 
the  Apologia,  "  The  Anglican  Church  might  have  the 
Apostolical  succession,  as  had  the  Monophysites ;  but 
such  acts  as  were  in  progress  led  me  to  the  gravest 

1  Apologia^  pp.  227-8. 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  155 

suspicion,  not  that  it  would  soon  cease  to  be  a  Church, 
but  that  it  had  never  been  a  Church  all  along."      For 
the  following  four  or  five  years  Newman  calls  himself 
"upon  his  death-bed"  as  an  Anglican.     Like  Heine's 
very  different  and  much  more  penal  sufferings  in  his 
Mattrass-Gruft,   the   experiences   through  which  New- 
man went  on  his  long  death-bed  certainly  could  not  be 
said  to  constitute  a  euthanasia.     He  found  many  of  his 
intimate  friends  very  much  disposed   to   take  lightly 
the  repudiation  of  the  Tracts  by  all  the  chief  authorities 
of  the  Church  of  England,  and  to  go  on  much  as  before 
pleading  the  claims  of  the  Church  of  England  to  the 
faith  of  baptized  Anglicans  on  the  old  grounds.     He 
himself  could  not  do  this.    He  regarded  what  had  taken 
place  as  a  virtual  rejection  of  Church  doctrines  by  the 
Church,  and  as  practically  confessing  that  the  Anglican 
Church  did  not  wish  to  be  in  communion  with  the  Catholic 
Church.     He  accordingly  fell  back  upon  a  new  theory 
of  his  position — a  new  and  weaker  theory.     He  could 
not  join  the  Church  of  Rome  while  it  tolerated  what  he 
still  thought  such  abuses  as  giving  to  the  Virgin  Mary 
and  to  the  Saints  a  worship  that  he  thought   incom- 
patible with  the  worship  due  to  God,  and  therefore  he 
held   that   he   had   no  choice  but  to  stay  by  the  old 
Church  in  which  he  was  born,  and  to  justify  that  course 
as  best  he  could.     And  the  new  defence  was  this.    He 
observed  that  the  Church  of  Israel   from  the  time  of 
Jeroboam  was  definitely  excommunicated  by  the  Church 
of  the  other  two  tribes,  which  remained  the  only  Church 
of  the  true  worship ;  but  yet,  in  spite  of  this,  two  great 
prophets,  Elijah  and  Elisha,  were  sent  to  this  excom- 
municated  Church,  and   moreover,  the   whole   history 
assumes  that  Samaria  was  still  under  the  Divine  care. 


156  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

and  that  too  without  any  condition  being  imposed  on 
her  people  that  they  should  submit  to  the  Church  whose 
worship  was  in  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem. 

Under  the  awkward  circumstances  of  the  case,  being 
unable  to  deny  that  his  own  Church  strenuously  repudi- 
ated what  he  thought  the  true  principles  of  Catholicity, 
and  yet  unable  to  retreat  to  any  Church  that  asserted 
them,  Newman  comforted  himself  by  declaring  that 
England  was  in  truth  in  the  position  of  Samaria,  and 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  true  Anglicans  to  remain  where 
they  were,  waiting  for  light,  making  the  most  of  their 
Apostolical  succession  and  their  private  right  to  cherish 
the  doctrinal  truth  ofwhich  they  had  possessed  themselves, 
in  spite  of  the  admission  they  were  compelled  to  make, 
that  their  Church  as  a  whole  rejected  that  true  doctrine. 

This  position  Newman  set  forth  in  four  sermons, 
preached  in  1841,  on  the  duty  of  remaining  Anglicans 
under  the  great  discouragement,  as  he  held  it  to 
be,  of  the  Jerusalem  bishopric  and  the  condemna- 
tion of  Tract  90,  Sermons  21  to  24  inclusive,  of  the 
volume  on  Subjects  of  the  Bay.  They  are  amongst  the 
most  touching  he  ever  preached,  expressing  with  his 
usual  pathos  the  pain  of  his  position  as  a  member  of  a 
Church  whose  mission  appeared  to  have  "failed,"  who 
"honoured  not  the  precept  of  unity,"  who  "had  no 
heart  for  that  outward  glory  of  older  times,"  but  who, 
like  Elijah  fleeing  to  Horeb,  the  sacred  mountain  of  the 
older  covenant,  "  fled  to  Antiquity,  and  would  not  stop 
short  of  it,"  and  "  so  heard  the  words  of  comfort  which 
reconciled  him  to  his  work  and  to  its  issue."  The 
comfort  consisted  in  the  assurance  that  after  all,  out- 
ward signs  like  tempest,  and  earthquake,  and  fire, 
even  though  the  fire  be  the  fire  of  cloven  tongues  such 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  157 

as  descended  at  Pentecost,  are  not  the  final  signs  of 
God's  presence,  which  is  most  truly  discerned  in  a 
"  still  small  voice,"  such  as  that  which  the  prophet,  even 
of  a  nation  in  apostasy,  was  permitted  to  hear. 

Nothing  could  express  more  powerfully  the  mixture  of 
ansfuish  and  of  faith  which  filled  Newman's  heart  at  this 
time  than  the  conclusion  of  the  last  of  these  sermons — 
"  What  want  we  then  but  faith  in  our  Church  ?  With 
faith  we  can  do  everything ;  without  faith  we  can 
do  nothing.  If  we  have  a  secret  misgiving  about  her 
all  is  lost ;  we  lose  our  nerve,  our  powers,  our  position, 
our  hope.  A  cold  despondency  and  sickness  of  mind,  a 
niggardness  and  peevishness  of  spirit,  a  cowardice  and  a 
sluggishness  envelop  us,  penetrate  us,  stifle  us.  Let 
it  not  be  so  with  us ;  let  us  be  of  good  heart ;  let  us 
accept  her  as  God's  gift  and  our  portion ;  let  us  imitate 
him  who,  '  when  he  was  by  the  bank  of  Jordan,  .  .  . 
took  the  mantle  of  Elijah  that  fell  from  him,  and  smote 
the  waters,  and  said,  Where  is  the  Lord  God  of  Elijah  ? ' 
She  is  like  tlie  mantle  of  Elijah,  a  relic  from  Him  who 
is  gone  up  on  high." 

Newman  had  thus  already  come  to  consider  his 
Church  a  "  relic  "  of  older  and  better  days.  Evidently 
he  had  that  secret  misgiving  about  his  Church  which  he 
here  condemns,  and  it  was  a  misgiving  which  grew  upon 
him  steadily.  His  resolve  to  remain  in  the  Anglican 
Church  was  really  hanging  by  a  thread,  though  it  hung  by 
this  thread  for  a  considerable  time,  for  even  the  threads 
of  Newman's  nature  are  very  tenacious  threads.  In  the 
four  sermons  from  which  I  have  just  quoted  he  made 
it  clear  that  in  his  belief  Elijah  and  Elisha  could  only 
have  acted  as  they  did  under  explicit  Divine  instruction, 
—explicit  instruction  which  he  assumes  but  of  course 


158  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

could  not  prove  to  have  been  given, — and  that  it  is  only 
right  for  men  to  remain  in  their  original  communion  after 
they  have  once  been  compelled  to  entertain  doubts  of 
the  grace  vouchsafed  to  that  communion,  so  long  as  they 
are  in  serious  doubt  of  the  claim  of  any  other  Church 
on  their  allegiance.  So  long  as  his  conviction  lasted 
that  the  corruptions  of  Rome  were  too  serious  to  admit 
of  his  passing  into  her  fold,  he  stayed  in  the  communion 
in  which  he  was  born — so  lonor  and  no  longrer.  But  the 
language  which  he  had  used  against  Rome  was,  as  he 
afterwards  said,  rather  the  lansfuao^e  he  had  learned 
from  the  Anglican  divines  of  the  seventeenth  century 
than  the  language  which  he  himself  had  felt  it  his 
personal  duty  to  apply  to  her.  When  he  retracted  that 
language  in  1843,  he  declared  that  he  had  not  been 
speaking  his  own  words,  but  had  been  following  ''  almost 
a  consensus  of  the  divines  of  my  own  Church;"  and  in 
the  Apologia — treating  of  these  charges  against  Rome 
and  their  retractation — he  likened  his  position  to  that 
of  the  convict  who  on  the  scaffold  bit  off  his  mother's 
ear,  on  the  ground  that  her  indulgence  of  him  as  a  child 
had  brought  liim  to  the  scaffold  at  last.  So  Newman 
accused  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  in  which  he  was 
born  of  having  misled  him  into  language  against  Rome 
which,  on  thorough  examination,  he  found  himself  unable 
to  justify,  but  which  he  had  accepted  in  a  filial  spirit. 
Apparently  he  felt  disposed  to  bite  off  the  ear  of  his 
own  Anglican  mother  for  having  taught  him  to  revile 
her  whom  he  found  to  be  worthy  of  all  honour. 

But  while  he  was  slowly  finding  this  out  in  his  retire- 
ment at  Littlemore, — he  had  resigned  his  living  at  St. 
Mary's  on  the  18th  September,  1843, — he  became  the 
object  of  unbridled   curiosity,  and   the  subject   of  an 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  159 

unlimited  number  of  rumours.  "  I  cannot  walk  into  or 
out  of  my  house,"  he  said,  "  but  curious  eyes  are  upon 
me.  Why  will  you  not  let  me  die  in  peace  ?  Wounded 
brutes  creep  into  some  hole  to  die  in,  and  no  one 
grudges  it  them.  Let  me  alone;  I  shall  not  trouble 
you  long.  This  was  the  keen,  heavy  feeling  which 
pierced  me,  and  I  think  these  are  the  very  words  that 
I  used  to  myself.  I  asked,  in  the  words  of  a  great 
motto,  '  Ubi  lapsus  ?  quid  feci  ? '  One  day  Avhen  I 
entered  my  house  I  found  a  flight  of  undergraduates 
inside.  Heads  of  Houses,  as  mounted  patrols,  walked 
their  horses  round  those  poor  cottages ;  Doctors  of 
Divinity  dived  into  the  hidden  recesses  of  that  private 
tenement  uninvited,  and  drew  domestic  conclusions  from 
what  they  saw  there."  ^ 

In  fact,  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  (Dr.  Bagot)  was  pelted 
with  complaints  that  Newman  was  erecting  an  Anglo- 
Catholic  monastery  at  Littlemore,  and  that  the  cells, 
chapel,  dormitories  belonging  thereto  were  all  advancing 
rapidly  to  completion.  This  was  in  1842,  before 
Newman  had  resigned  the  vicarage  of  St.  Mary's.  It 
was  even  alleged  that  Newman  had  already  been 
received  into  the  Catholic  Church,  and  was  foundinof 
a  pseudo-Anglican  monastery,  which  was  really  to  be 
under  the  guidance  of  Rome;  but  this  calumny  the 
then  Bishop  of  Oxford — a  very  excellent  man — did  not 
think  it  worth  while  even  to  repeat  to  Newman,  in 
order  that  it  might  be  contradicted.  The  charge  that  he 
was  erecting  an  Anglo-Catholic  monastery  without  even 
asking  the  consent  of  his  bishop  was  mentioned,  and 
was  contradicted.     Newman  merely  said  that  he  was 

1  Apologia^  p.  289. 


160  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

building  a  parsonage   for   Littlemore,  which   it   much 
needed,  without  a  chapel,  by  connecting  together  a  few 
cottages,  and  that  for  himself  he  intended  to  devote 
himself  more  and  more  to  religious  meditation,  though 
not   at   the   expense   of    the   parish   work,   which    he 
zealously  attended  to ;  and  that  so  far  as  regarded  like- 
minded  friends,  he  was  of  course  glad  that  they  should 
share  his  mode  of  life  if  they  wished,  but  that  no  sort 
of  institution  of  any  kind  was  in  process  of  formation. 
"  I  am  attempting  nothing  ecclesiastical,"  he  said,  "  but 
something  personal  and  private,  and  which  can  only 
be  made  public,  not  private,  by  newspapers  and  letter- 
writers,   in   which   sense  the   most    sacred    and    con- 
scientious  resolves   and   acts   may  certainly  be   made 
the  objects  of  an  unmannerly  and  unfeeling  curiosity."^ 
Newman  was  even  accused  of  recommending  those 
who  had   already  become  Roman  Catholics  to  retain 
their  preferment  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  the 
Bishop  of  Oxford  was  even  misled  into  believing  for  a 
time  this  accusation  against  him.     This  of  course  he 
did  not   do,  and   indignantly  resented  the  imputation 
of  doing,  for  he  himself  had  set  the  example  of  resign- 
ing^  his   livinor    lonsf    before   he   became   a   convinced 
Roman  Cathohc.     For  more  than  two  years  after  feel- 
ing something  approaching  to  a  belief  that  the  Church 
of    Rome   was   the   only   Catholic   Church   of  Christ, 
though  he  still  held  it  to  be  corrupted  by  a  devotion 
to  the  Virgin  and  the  saints  which  amounted  to  a  grave 
unfaithfulness    to    the    primitive    teaching,    Newman 
remained  in  lay  communion  with  the  Anglican  Church, 
though    he   would   not   remain   a   clergyman   of    that 

^  Apologia,  pp.  294-5. 


ADVANCING  ESTRANGEMENTS.  161 

Church,  and  this  was  the  course  which  he  also  recom- 
mended to  those  who  consulted  him  on  such  subjects. 
His  own  state  of  mind  and  feeling  during  these  last 
two  years  of  hesitation  was  very  painful.  One  of  his 
most  intimate  friends,  an  Anglican  to  the  last,  died  in 
1844,  and  he  had  expected,  he  says,  that  his  death 
would  have  brougrht  lio^ht  to  his  mind  as  to  what  he 
ought  to  do.  It  did  not.  He  wrote  in  his  diary,  "  I 
sobbed  bitterly  over  his  coffin,  to  think  that  he  left  me 
still  dark  as  to  what  the  way  of  truth  was,  and  what 
I  ought  to  do  in  order  to  please  God  and  fulfil  His  will."  ^ 
In  such  anxieties,  hesitations,  and  doubts  the  period 
wore  away  during  which  Newman  was  on  what  he 
called  his  Anglican  death-bed.  There  were  many 
miserable  searchings  of  heart,  many  seemingly  un- 
answered prayers  for  more  light,  many  slanders  to  be 
repelled,  many  unmerited  but  not  unkind  reproaches 
to  be  borne.  And  then  at  last  the  end  came.  The 
Essay  on  Development,  of  which  I  must  speak  next, 
written  while  Newman  was  nominally  an  Anglican, 
though  substantially  a  Roman  Catholic,  was  nearly 
finished,  when  in  October,  1845,  he  felt  that  his 
conversion  was  really  complete,  and  that  he  should 
imperil  his  salvation  by  remaining  longer  outside  the 
communion  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  But  before 
I  come  to  his  reconciliation  to  Rome  I  must  give  some 
account  of  the  remarkable  essay  with  the  composition 
of  which  his  Anglican  life  terminated. 

*  Apologia,  p.  359. 


M 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  DEVELOPMENT   OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE,  AND 
RECONCILIATION   TO   ROME. 

Newman's  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian 
Doctrine  may  be  regarded  either  as  the  first  of  his 
Roman  Catholic  or  as  the  last  of  his  Anglican  pro- 
ductions. In  point  of  time  it  was  the  latter ;  in  point 
of  substance  it  was  the  former.  Speaking  of  the  last 
year  of  his  life  at  Littlemore,  he  says,  *'A11  this  time 
I  was  hard  at  my  Essay  on  Doctrinal  Development.  As 
I  advanced  my  view  so  cleared,  that  instead  of  speaking 
any  more  of  'the  Roman  Catholics,'  I  boldly  called 
them  Catholics.  Before  I  got  to  the  end  I  resolved 
to  be  received,  and  the  book  remains  in  the  state  in 
which  it  was  then,  unfinished."^  Why  the  unfinished 
essay  of  which  Newman  thus  speaks  was  never  finished 
after  he  joined  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  I  have 
never  been  quite  able  to  understand,  unless  it  be  that 
his  fine  sense  of  fitness  discerned  something  appropriate 
in  an  abrupt  termination  to  such  a  task,  which  he  was 
unwilling  to  disturb.  Although  first  published  as  the 
effort  of  one  outside  the  Church  to  explain  the  apparent 

1  Apologia,  p.  366. 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.      163 

changes  which  took  place  in  the  form  of  primitive 
Christianity,  an  effort  which  resulted  in  the  writer's 
identification  of  that  primitive  Christianity  with  the 
Christianity  of  the  Roman  Church,  there  seems  to  be 
no  reason  at  all,  apart  from  reluctance  to  turn  a 
tentative  experiment  in  investigation  into  a  formal 
demonstration,  why  the  line  of  thought  which  was 
commenced  while  Newman  was  still  in  uncertainty  as 
to  its  tendenc}^,  should  not  have  been  pursued  and 
completed  as  a  definite  apology  for  the  theology  of  the 
Church  he  has  since  joined.  Of  course  he  would  have 
had  to  submit  any  book  written  by  him  as  a  Roman 
Catholic  to  the  authorities  of  his  Church,  as  he  offered 
to  do  the  Essay  on  Development  in  its  present  condition, 
— an  offer  which  was  refused, — but  there  is  no  ground 
at  all  for  supposing  that  that  necessity  would  have 
interfered  substantially  with  the  general  drift  of  his 
argument.  Even  as  it  stands,  the  Essay  on  Development 
has,  so  far  as  I  can  hear,  been  adopted  with  enthusiasm 
by  the  most  orthodox  school  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  and  it  is  now  usually  regarded  by  Roman 
Catholics  as  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  modern  apologies 
for  their  specific  theological  doctrines. 

It  is  clear  that  what  Newman  was  in  search  of,  was 
a  principle  which  should  at  once  vindicate  his  life-long 
devotion  to  primitive  Christianity,  and  yet  discover  in 
primitive  Christianity  signs  of  that  capacity  for  growth 
which  he  had  early  learned  from  Scott,  the  commen- 
tator on  the  Bible,  to  regard  as  the  true  test  of  life. 
Primitive  Christianity  as  a  mere  fossil,  as  a  *'  deposit " 
which  liad  to  be  kept  apart  from  all  the  transforming 
change  into  which  living  principles  blossom  when  they 
enter  into  combinations  with  so  changeful  and  elastic 


164  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

a  universe  as  ours,  and  with  a  nature  so  full  of  all 
sorts  of  potentialities  as  man's,  had  become  nearly 
inconceivable  to  Newman.  He  had  begun  to  see  that 
even  though  principles  remain  the  same,  doctrines  must 
expand,  must  become  explicit  where  they  had  been 
only  implicit,  must  assert  themselves  under  new  condi- 
tions which  shed  new  light  upon  them,  must  explain 
themselves,  must  illustrate  themselves  by  giving  birth 
to  moral  consequences,  to  customs,  to  institutions,  to 
devotional  forms ;  and  that  without  such  a  developing 
power  as  this,  the  primitive  teaching,  the  deposit  given 
once  for  all,  would  be  a  dead  formula,  and  not  a  living 
power.  The  doctrine  of  the  triune  Deity  must  explain 
itself.  In  what  sense  is  God  Three  and  yet  One  ?  The 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  must  explain  itself.  In 
what  sense  was  Christ  both  God  and  man  ?  Was  His 
humanity  real  or  only  apparent  ?  Was  His  personality 
both  human  and  Divine  ?  or  if  Divine  only,  how  was  that 
to  be  reconciled  with  a  real  humanity,  if  real  it  was  ? 
Again,  if  sin  is  the  fearful  evil  which  primitive  Chris- 
tianity teaches  it  to  be,  what  forces  would  be  the  most 
suitable  for  stemming  the  torrent  of  this  evil  ?  To 
what  institutions  should  the  penitent  be  submitted  ? 
What  are  the  emotions,  and  fears,  and  hopes  with  which 
his  weak  nature  may  be  legitimately  aided  to  keep  this 
evil  at  a  distance  ?  And  if  the  primitive  revelation  is  to 
be  susceptible  of  this  sort  of  moral  development,  what  is 
to  be  the  check  on  this  development  ?  who  is  to  prevent 
it  from  so  combining  with  the  desires  and  hopes  of  our 
nature  as  to  degenerate  from  its  former  purity,  and  from 
popularizing  itself  by  virtue  of  that  very  degeneration  ? 
Must  there  not  be  some  guiding  power  which  resists  the 
tendency  of  man's  intellect,  either  to  rationalize  it,  or 


Development  of  christian  doctrine,    ies 

to  cover  it  with  parasitic  superstitions,  or  perhaps  to 
injure  it  in  both  ways  at  once  ?  If  Christ  provided  by 
the  apostolate  for  authorities  who  represented  Him  when 
He  had  ascended  into  heaven,  was  it  not  probable  that 
the  Apostles  had  left  behind  them  some  successor  to 
their  authority,  when  they  too,  one  by  one,  disappeared 
from  the  scene  of  their  labours  ?  Such  were  the 
questions  which  Newman  set  himself  to  answer  in  his 
Essay  on  Develo'pme.nt,  and  the  answers  he  found  for 
them  were  answers  full  of  devout  subtlety,  as  well  as 
answers  in  sympathy  with  the  principle  of  what  was  to 
be  the  great  scientific  conception  of  the  century. 

When  we  consider  that  the  Essay  on  Development  was  \^ 
written  in  1844  and  1845,  many  years  before  the  scien- 
tific conception  of  biological  evolution  had  been  ex- 
plained and  illustrated  by  Darwin  and  Wallace,  and 
a  host  of  other  writers,  it  appears  to  me  that  this  essay, 
with  its  many  admirable  illustrations  from  biology, 
demonstrates  that  Newman's  genius  is  not  simply,  as 
has  been  often  asserted,  a  special  gift  for  the  vindication 
of  authority  in  religion,  and  for  the  revivification  of  the 
past,  since  it  betrays  so  deep  an  insight  into  the  gener- 
ating thoughts  which  are  transforming  the  present  and 
moulding  the  future.  His  discussion  of  the  true  tests  of 
genuine  development  is  marked  by  the  keenest  pene- 
tration into  one  of  the  most  characteristic  conceptions 
of  modern  science.  Seven  tests  of  a  true  development, 
as  distinguished  from  a  corruption,  are  given  :  (1)  preserv- 
ation of  type,  as  the  type  of  the  child  is  preserved, 
though  altered  and  strengthened  in  the  man ;  (2)  con- 
tinuity of  principles,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  principle 
of  one  language  favours  compound  words,  while  that 
of  another   does  not;    (3)    the   power  of  assimilating 


166  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

apparently  foreign  material,  as  a  plant  will  grow  luxuri- 
antly in  one  habitat  and  only  sparely  in  another,  but 
assimilates  more  or  less  foreign  material  in  any  habitat 
in  which  it  will  grow  at  all ;  (4)  "  early  anticipation  " 
of  the  mature  form,  as  the  Russian  nation  began  to  aim 
at  Constantinople  centuries  before  they  were  a  great 
power  even  on  the  Black  Sea,  and  as  Athanasius  was 
made  a  bishop  by  his  playfellows  in  anticipation  of  his 
genius  for  ecclesiastical  government,  or  as  Sir  Walter 
Scott  delighted  his  schoolfellows  by  relating  stories  to 
them  when  he  was  a  mere  child ;  (5)  "  logical  sequence  " 
of  ideas,  as  when  Jeroboam,  in  his  anxiety  to  prevent 
a  return  of  the  ten  tribes  to  their  old  allegiance,  set 
up  a  worship  that  might  wean  them  from  their  attach- 
ment to  Jerusalem,  on  the  express  ground  that  if  he 
did  not,  their  religious  instinct  would  be  taking  them 
back  to  their  great  Temple ;  (6)  *'  preservative  ad- 
ditions," such,  for  instance,  as  Courts  of  Justice,  to 
the  authority  of  government,  which  strengthen  the 
government  by  protecting  the  obedient  and  punishing 
the  rebellious ;  and  finally,  (7)  "  chronic  continuance," 
as  the  chronic  continuance  of  the  American  Union 
shows  that  the  republican  principle  is  still  alive,  where- 
as the  gradual  engrafting  of  imperial  institutions  on 
Republican  forms,  showed  that  the  Republican  principle 
was  dying  out  in  ancient  Rome. 

All  these  tests  of  true,  as  distinguished  from  corrupt 
or  deteriorating,  development  are  discussed  by  Newman 
with  admirable  subtlety,  and  a  very  fine  sense  for  the 
scientific  character  of  the  conception  of  evolution  itself, 
which  would  not  be  remarkable  now,  but  was  certainly 
very  remarkable  in  the  year  1845.  He  illustrates  his 
first  test — "  preservation  of  type  or  idea  " — by  collecting 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE.       167 

the  descriptions  given  of  Christianity  in  the  first  three 
centuries  by  independent  observers,  and  putting  it  to 
his  readers  what  form  of  Christianity  it  is  that  now 
most  closely  corresponds  to  the  type  so  described.  He 
gives  the  account  of  Tacitus,  of  Suetonius,  of  Pliny, 
shows  how  all  these  writers  describe  Christianity  as 
something  subversive  of  both  political  and  social  peace, 
as  of  the  nature  of  a  secret  conspiracy,  as  possessed 
by  a  spirit  of  obstinacy,  as  insisting  on  the  duty  of 
addressing  to  Christ  a  certain  form  of  words  (carmen), 
and  as  even  more  mischievous  and  contagious  through 
the  inflexible  resistance  it  inspired  to  any  State  decree 
which  interfered  with  its  rites,  than  through  the 
morality  it  enforced,  which  is  described  as  intrinsically 
unobjectionable,  though  tending  to  the  break-up  of  the 
structure  of  human  society  as  it  was  then  understood 
by  these  writers.  He  runs  through  the  story  of  the 
divisions  in  the  early  Church,  the  Arian  and  semi-Arian, 
the  Nestorian  and  Monophysite  controversies,  and  shows 
how  these  divisions  were  caused  by  thinkers  who 
rebelled  against  mystery  in  theology,  and  tried  to 
simplify  the  truth  handed  down ;  how,  after  the  emperors 
became  Christian,  the  heresiarchs  almost  uniformly 
sought,  and  often — like  Arius,  the  semi-Arians  and 
the  Monophysites — found,  help  from  the  State,  which 
naturally  disliked  the  dogmatic  independence  and 
tenacity  of  the  Church;  and  how  it  became  almost 
one  of  the  chief  indications  of  heresy  to  lean  on  the 
civil  power  instead  of  on  the  doctrinal  tradition  of  the 
Fathers.  And  then  he  asks  if  there  is  no  Church  in 
modern  times  which  excites  the  suspicion  and  jealousy 
of  the  world  and  the  State,  just  as  the  Church  of  the 
first  six  centuries  excited  it,  and  yet  stands  alone  and 


168  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

unawed  when  it  finds  the  powers  of  this  world  ranged 
against  it.  Newman's  conclusions  are  stated  in  a  few 
pithy  paragraphs,  first  as  to  the  Church  of  the  first 
three  centuries,  next  as  to  the  Church  of  the  fourth 
century,  finally  as  to  the  Church  of  the  fifth  and  sixth 
centuries,  and  as  they  show  the  drift  of  his  thought 
very  clearly,  these  conclusions  I  must  quote.  In  sum- 
ming up  his  review  of  the  first  three  centuries  he  says — 
"  If  there  is  a  form  of  Christianity  now  in  the  world 
which  is  accused  of  gross  superstition,  of  borrowing  its 
rites  and  customs  from  the  heathen,  and  of  ascribing 
to  forms  and  ceremonies  an  occult  virtue; — a  religion 
which  is  considered  to  buiden  and  enslave  the  mind 
by  its  requisitions,  to  address  itself  to  the  weak-minded 
and  ignorant,  to  be  supported  by  sophistry  and  impos- 
ture, and  to  contradict  reason  and  exalt  mere  irrational 
faith ; — a  religion  which  impresses  on  the  serious  mind 
very  distressing  views  of  the  guilt  and  consequences 
of  sin,  sets  upon  the  minute  acts  of  the  day,  one  by 
one,  their  definite  value  for  praise  or  blame,  and  thus 
casts  a  grave  shadow  over  the  future ; — a  religion  which 
holds  up  to  admiration  the  surrender  of  wealth,  and 
disables  serious  persons  from  enjoying  it  if  they  would  ; — 
a  religion,  the  doctrines  of  which,  be  they  good  or  bad, 
are  to  the  generality  of  men  unknown ;  which  is  con- 
sidered to  bear  on  its  very  surface  signs  of  folly  and 
falsehood  so  distinct  that  a  glance  suffices  to  judge  of  it, 
and  careful  examination  is  preposterous;  which  is  felt 
to  be  so  simply  bad  that  it  may  be  calumniated  at 
hazard  and  at  pleasure,  it  being  nothing  but  absurdity 
to  stand  upon  the  accurate  distribution  of  its  guilt 
among  its  particular  acts,  or  painfully  to  determine  how 
far  this  or  that  story  is  literally  true,  what  must  be 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.      169 

allowed  in  candour,  or  what  is  improbable,  what  cuts 
two  ways,  or  what  is  not  proved,  or  what  may  be 
plausibly  defended ; — a  religion  such  that  men  look  at 
a  convert  to  it  with  a  feeling  which  no  other  sect  raises 
except  Judaism,  Socialism,  or  Mormonism,  with  curiosity, 
suspicion,  fear,  disgust,  as  the  case  may  be,  as  if  some- 
thin-g  strange  had  befallen  him,  as  if  he  had  had  an 
initiation  into  a  mystery,  and  had  come  into  communion 
with  dreadful  influences,  as  if  he  were  now  one  of  a 
confederacy  which  claimed  him,  attested  him,  stripped 
him  of  his  personality,  reduced  him  to  a  mere  organ 
or  instrument  of  a  whole ; — a  religion  which  men  hate 
as  proselytizing,  anti-social,  revolutionary,  as  dividing 
families,  separating  chief  friends,  corrupting  the  maxims 
of  government,  making  a  mock  at  law,  dissolving  the 
empire,  the  enemy  of  human  nature,  and  *  a  conspirator 
against  its  rights  and  privileges'; — a  religion  which 
they  consider  the  champion  and  instrument  of  darkness, 
and  a  pollution  calling  down  upon  the  land  the  anger 
of  heaven; — a  religion  which  they  associate  with  in- 
trigue and  conspiracy,  which  they  speak  about  in 
whispers,  which  they  detect  by  anticipation  in  what- 
ever goes  wrong,  and  to  which  they  impute  whatever 
is  unaccountable; — a  religion  the  very  name  of  which 
they  cast  out  as  evil,  and  use  simply  as  a  bad  epithet, 
and  which  from  the  impulse  of  self-preservation  they 
would  persecute  if  they  could; — if  there  be  such  a 
religion  now  in  the  world,  it  is  not  unlike  Christianity 
as  that  same  world  viewed  it  when  first  it  came  forth 
from  its  Divine  Author."  ^ 

It  is   worth   notice,   perhaps,  that   in   this   passage 

1  Essay  on  Development,  pp.  240-2,  1st  edition.    James  Toovey. 


170  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Newman  makes  the  suspicion,  distrust,  and  almost 
disgust  with  which  what  he  regards  as  the  true 
Cliristianity  was  viewed,  to  be  one  of  the  main  "  notes  " 
of  the  Church ;  and  that  if  that  be  so,  the  better  Roman 
Catholics  are  treated,  the  less  conspicuous,  according 
to  this  passage,  will  be  the  "  note "  of  authenticity  in 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  In  a  world  which  humbles 
itself  before  such  men  as  Father  Damien,  the  apostle 
and  martyr  who  gave  up  his  life  for  the  lepers  of  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  this  "  note  "  of  the  Church  on  which 
Newman  insists  so  emphatically  can  hardly  be  called 
conspicuous. 

After  his  review  of  the  Church  of  the  fourth  century 
Newman  concludes,  "  On  the  whole,  then,  we  have 
reason  to  say  that  if  there  be  a  form  of  Christianity  at 
this  day  distinguished  for  its  careful  organization  and 
its  consequent  power;  if  it  is  spread  over  the  world; 
if  it  is  conspicuous  for  zealous  maintenance  of  its  own 
creed ;  if  it  is  intolerant  towards  what  it  considers  error ; 
if  it  is  eno^aored  in  ceaseless  war  with  all  other  bodies 
called  Christian ;  if  it,  and  it  alone,  is  called  '  Catholic ' 
by  the  world,  nay,  by  these  very  bodies,  and  if  it  makes 
much  of  the  title ;  if  it  names  them  heretics,  and  warns 
them  of  coming  woe,  and  calls  on  them,  one  by  one, 
to  come  over  to  itself,  overlooking  every  other  tie; 
and  if  they,  on  the  other  hand,  call  it  seducer,  harlot, 
apostate,  Antichrist,  devil;  if,  however  they  differ  one 
W'ith  another,  they  consider  it  their  common  enemy; 
if  they  strive  to  unite  together  against  it,  and  cannot ; 
if  they  are  but  local ;  if  they  continually  subdivide,  and 
it  remains  one ;  if  they  fall  one  after  another,  and  make 
way  for  new  sects,  and  it  remains  the  same;  such  a 
form  of  religion  is  not  unlike  the  Christianity  of  the 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.      171 

Nicene  era."^  There  again  I  should  say  that  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  of  Pio  Nono  is  much  better 
described  than  the  Eoman  Catholic  Church  of  Leo  XIII. 
Neither  does  the  Church  of  Leo  XIII.  denounce  external 
heresy  with  anything  like  the  same  verve  as  the  Church 
of  Pio  Nono ;  nor  do  the  Christian  Churches  outside  the 
pale  of  the  Papal  Church  denounce  the  Papal  Church 
with  anything  like  the  same  vivacity.  Indeed,  there 
is  something  like  an  entente  cordiale  between  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  of  to-day  and  various  other  Churches — 
an  alliance  against  scepticism. 

After  Newman's  review  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  cen- 
turies, in  which  the  Nestorian  and  Monophysite  heresies 
flourished,  he  concludes  thus — ''If,  then,  there  is  now 
a  form  of  Christianity  such  that  it  extends  throughout 
the  world,  though  with  varying  measures  of  prominence 
or  prospeiity  in  separate  places;  that  it  lies  under  the 
power  of  sovereigns  and  magistrates,  in  different  ways 
alien  to  its  faith;  that  flourishing  nations  and  great 
empires,  professing  or  tolerating  the  Christian  name, 
lie  over  against  it  as  antagonists ;  that  schools  of 
philosophy  and  learning  are  supporting  theories  or 
following  out  conclusions  hostile  to  it,  and  establishing 
an  exegetical  system  subversive  of  its  Scriptures ;  that 
it  has  lost  whole  Churches  by  schism,  and  is  now 
opposed  by  powerful  communions  once  part  of  itself; 
that  it  has  been  altogether  or  almost  driven  from  some 
countries ;  that  in  others  its  line  of  teachers  is  overlaid, 
its  flocks  oppressed,  its  churches  occupied,  its  property 
held  by  what  may  be  called  a  duplicate  succession; 
that  in  others  its  members  are  degenerate  and  corrupt, 

^  Essay  on  Development^  p.  269. 


172  CARDI^TAL  NEWMA]^. 

and  surpassed  in  conscientiousness  and  in  virtue,  as 
in  gifts  of  intellect,  by  the  very  heretics  whom  it 
condemns ;  that  heresies  are  rife  and  bishops  negligent 
within  its  own  pale;  and  that  amid  its  disorders  and 
fears  there  is  but  one  Voice  for  whose  decisions  its 
people  wait  with  trust,  one  Name  and  one  See  to  which 
they  look  with  hope,  and  that  name  Peter,  and  that  see 
Rome ; — such  a  religion  is  not  unlike  the  Christianity 
of  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries."  ^ 

Is  not  that  almost  equivalent  to  making  partial  and 
local  degeneracy  of  the  Church,  when  it  occurs  without 
derogating  from  the  authority  of  the  Central  See,  one 
of  the  "notes"  of  the  Church?  Is  it  not  almost 
equivalent  to  ratifying  the  judgment  of  that  German 
monk  in  the  Lutheran  period,  who  was  said  to  have 
been  converted  from  his  doubts  by  a  visit  to  Rome, 
because  he  found  the  Church  of  Rome  so  corrupt  and 
yet  so  powerful;  his  view  being  that  no  Church  not 
divinely  sustained  could  survive  such  corruptions  ?  No 
doubt  our  Lord  distinctly  anticipates  unfaithful  stewards 
in  His  Church,  but  He  certainly  does  not  speak  of  them 
as  being,  even  involuntarily,  witnesses  to  the  truth  He 
had  revealed.  Such  is  the  mode  in  which  Newman 
deals  with  his  first  and  chief  test  of  a  true  development, 
the  "  preservation  of  type  or  idea." 

In  dealing  with  the  second  test  of  a  true  develop- 
ment, the  continuity  of  the  principles  under  which 
the  development  proceeds,  Newman  illustrates  that 
continuity  first  by  the  resolute  adhesion  of  the  early 
and  the  later  Church  alike  to  the  mystical  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  exclusively  literal   interpretation 

1  Essay  on  Developmenti  pp.  316,  317. 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE.      173 

of  Scripture  ;  and  next  by  the  resolute  assertion  of  the 
early  and  the  later  Church  alike,  that  faith  is  a  better 
attitude  of  mind  than  doubt;  that  the  highest  mind 
inclines  to  take  on  trust  what  lower  minds  challenge 
till  they  have  an  adequate  proof  that  their  trust  is 
legitimate — in  a  word,  that  the  philosophy  which  (like 
Locke's  in  modern  times)  insisted  on  what  is  called 
evidence  that  a  revelation  was  Divine,  before  reposing 
any  trust  in  it,  was  the  kind  of  philosophy  which  would 
have  undermined  all  the  greatest  spiritual  movements 
that  the  world  has  ever  experienced,  and  extinguished 
all  noble  enthusiasm  in  the  very  moment  of  its  birth. 

As  regards  the  first  of  these  illustrations,  the  in- 
clination to  connect  a  mystical  wdth  a  literal  inter- 
pretation of  Scripture,  often  attaching  more  importance 
to  the  mystical  than  to  the  literal  interpretation, 
Newman  shows  that  very  early  in  the  history  of  the 
Church  Irenseus  treats  the  account  of  the  Annunciation 
to  the  Virgin  Mary  as  in  some  sense  a  fulfilment  of  the 
prophecy  in  Genesis  concerning  the  seed  of  the  woman 
bruising  the  serpent's  head,  and  argues  for  the  dignity 
of  the  Virgin  Mary  as  a  nobler  Eve,  on  the  strength  of 
that  mystical  fulfilment  of  prophecy.  From  Polycarp 
to  St.  Alfonso  Liguori,  according  to  Newman,  the  Church 
has  steadily  insisted  on  attaching  the  greatest  possible 
importance  to  the  mystical  interpretations  of  Scripture. 
I  do  not  suppose  that  any  one  who  really  enters  at 
all  into  the  spirit  of  Scripture  ventures  to  deny  the 
obviously  mystical  signification  of  many  passages,  nor 
the  double  current  of  meaning  in  others.  It  is  hardly 
possible  not  to  see  the  connection  between  the  willing- 
ness of  Abraham  to  give  up  his  son  to  death  on  Mount 
Moriah,  and  the  willingness  of  the  Father  to  give  up 


174  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

His  Son  to  death  on  Mount  Calvary,  though  the  one 
sacrifice  was  not  completed,  while  the  other  was.  It  is 
hardly  possible  not  to  assign  a  prophetic  and  mystical 
meaning  to  Isaiah's  prophecy  as  to  the  Son  who  should 
be  called  "Wonderful,  Counsellor,  the  Mighty  God." 
It  is  hardly  possible  not  to  regard  such  a  psalm  as  the 
104th,  when  it  speaks  of  God  sending  forth  His  Spirit, — 
after  He  had  withdrawn  it, — ''  to  renew  the  face  of  the 
earth,"  as  an  inspired  anticipation  of  the  sending  forth 
of  the  Spirit  on  the  day  of  Pentecost  to  renew  the 
earthly  life  of  man.  But  many  of  the  mystical  inter- 
pretations of  the  Fathers  are  altogether  different,  and 
seem  to  be  even  distinct  perversions  of  Scripture.  For 
example,  Isaiah's  prophecy  as  to  a  child  not  yet  born, 
before  whose  maturity  the  lands  of  Syria  and  Israel 
should  be  forsaken,  appears  to  admit  of  no  double 
current  of  meaning  at  all.  The  date  is  fixed  at  which 
it  is  to  be  fulfilled,  and  that  an  early  date ;  and  the 
event  prophesied  is  not  of  a  kind  admitting  of  a  larger 
fulfilment  in  the  future.  Of  course  the  reason  for 
giving  the  passage  a  mystical  interpretation  was  the 
apparent  prediction  of  a  supernatural  birth,  though 
that  is  a  point  on  which  the  best  modern  Hebrew 
scholars  are  very  doubtful ;  and  as  no  supernatural  birth 
is  even  alleged  to  have  taken  place  within  the  limits  of 
time  assigned,  the  pious  imagination  identified  the  pre- 
diction with  the  supernatural  birth  of  the  Saviour  of  the 
world.  That,  however,  is  quite  illegitimate  while  the 
strict  limit  of  time  exists,  and  cannot  be  explained  away. 
The  child's  birth  was  to  be  a  sign  of  the  judgment 
coming  upon  Israel  and  Syria,  and  that  judgment  was 
to  be  fulfilled  before  he  could  choose  for  himself  between 
good  and  evil.     If  the  sign  is  to  be  disconnected  with 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.      175 

the  conquest  of  Syria  and  Israel,  the  prophecy  as  a  pro- 
phecy disappears.  Yet  the  supernatural  birth  (if  the 
Hebrew  word  indicates  a  supernatural  birth)  cannot 
be  pushed  forward  many  centuries  without  disconnect- 
ing the  sign  from  the  event  which  was  to  follow  it. 
Mystical  interpretation  in  the  sense  of  catching  eagerly 
at  one  single  word  in  a  sentence,  and  ignoring  the  whole 
drift  of  the  sense,  is  surely  not  so  much  mystical  as 
perverse.  The  objections  reasonably  urged  against 
such  interpretations  are  not  really  objections  to  recog- 
nizing one  event  as  a  sign  of  another  and  greater  event 
of  the  same  type,  but  objections  to  the  practice  of 
subordinating  the  plain  sense  of  an  explicit  statement 
to  the  desire  to  discover  a  supernatural  meaning,  which 
can  only  be  squeezed  into  the  language  by  a  tour  de 
force.  Religious  mystery  is  not  enhanced,  but  brought 
into  disrepute  in  the  estimation  of  men,  by  the  habit 
of  discovering  it  where  it  is  not,  as  freely  as  where  it  is. 
In  relation  to  his  second  illustration  of  the  test  of  con- 
tinuity of  the  principle  of  development,  Newman  has 
no  difficulty  in  showing  that  the  early  Church  and  the 
mediaeval  Church  were  equally  eager  to  encourage  that 
forwardness  to  believe  which  springs  rather  from  the 
liveliness  of  the  affections  when  the  grace  of  God 
touches  them,  than  from  reasoning.  The  New  Testa- 
ment is  full  of  the  censure  of  the  unbelieving  spirit,  and 
later  theologians,  like  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Suarez, 
confirm  its  teaching.  The  real  difficulty,  I  imagine,  is 
to  distinguish  between  superstitious  readiness  to  believe 
and  generous  readiness  to  believe — the  readiness  which, 
like  Louis  XL's,  arose  from  selfish  fear,  and  the  readiness 
which,  like  St.  Francis  of  Assisi's,  arose  from  generous 
hope. 


176  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Then  Newman  goes  on  to  show  how  the  second  test 
of  sound  development — the  continuity  of  the  principles 
by  which  development  is  regulated — blends  with  the 
third  test,  the  power  to  assimilate  and  transform  alien 
material,  till  the  new  life  imparted  to  that  alien  material 
brings  about  a  complete  transformation  in  the  character- 
istic influence  which  that  foreign  material  is  made 
the  medium  of  diffusing.  Sacraments  of  evil  are 
exchanged  for  sacraments  of  grace,  and  the  very  same 
class  of  rites  and  practices  which  under  a  false  religion 
had  degraded  men,  under  a  true  religion  purifies  and 
exalts  them.  Here  he  approaches,  of  course,  the  most 
disputable  of  the  positions  of  the  Ronian  Catholic 
Church,  which  has  avowedly  adopted  the  pagan  ex- 
ternality of  ceremony  with  a  freedom  and  a  readiness 
that  has  justified  the  suspicion  with  which  it  is  viewed 
as  a  compromise  with  superstition  rather  than  a  triumph 
over  it.  Thus,  as  Newman  quotes  from  the  life  of  St. 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  that  saint  "  increased  the  devotion 
of  the  people  everywhere  by  instituting  festive  meetings 
in  honour  of  those  who  had  fought  for  the  faith.  The 
bodies  of  the  martyrs  were  distributed  in  different 
places,  and  the  people  assembled  and  made  merry,  as 
the  years  came  round,  holding  festival  in  their  honour. 
This  indeed  was  a  proof  of  his  great  wisdom,  ....  for 
perceiving  that  the  childish  and  untrained  populace 
were  retained  in  their  idolatrous  error  by  sensual 
indulgences,  in  order  that  what  was  of  first  importance 
should  at  any  rate  be  secured  to  them, — viz.  that  they 
should  look  to  God  in  place  of  their  vain  rites, — he 
allowed  them  to  be  merry,  and  solace  themselves  at  the 
monuments  of  the  holy  Martyrs,  as  if  their  behaviour 
would  in  time  undergo  a  spontaneous  change  into  greater 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE.      111 

seriousness  and  strictness,  and  faith  would  lead  tliem  to 
it ;  which  has  actually  been  the  happy  issue  in  that 
population,  all  sensual  gratification  having  turned  into 
a  spiritual  form  of  rejoicing."  ^  In  one  of  his  Roman 
Catholic  books  Newman  returned  to  this  subject  again, 
and  somewhat  developed  his  view  that  Christianity  had 
assimilated  pagan  practices,  and  turned  them  from 
sacraments  of  evil  into  sacraments  of  good.  He  ad- 
mitted that  besides  exerting  a  spiritual  influence  on 
the  men  of  good  will,  these  transformed  sacraments, 
which  were  originally  concessions  to  childishness  of  mind, 
often  familiarize  the  evil-minded  with  sacred  objects  and 
associations,  which  they  learn  to  treat  almost  with 
contempt,  though,  as  he  maintained,  without  any  abate- 
ment of  their  faith  in  the  Divine  power  of  the  religion 
they  thus  ignore.  The  character  of  all  these  popular 
external  observances  of  religion  is,  he  declared,  "  pretty 
much  the  same  as  St.  Jerome  and  St.  Gregory  Nyssen 
bear  witness  in  the  first  age  of  the  Church.  It  is  a 
mixed  multitude,  some  most  holy,  perhaps  even  saints ; 
others  penitent  sinners ;  but  others,  again,  a  mixture  of 
pilgrim  and  beggar,  or  pilgrim  and  robber,  or  half- 
gipsy,  or  three-quarters  boon  companion,  or  at  least 
with  nothing  saintly  and  little  religious  about  them. 
They  will  let  you  wash  their  feet  and  serve  them  at 
table,  and  the  hosts  have  more  merit  for  their  minis- 
try than  the  guests  for  their  weariness.  Yet  one  and 
all,  saints  and  sinners,  have  faith  in  things  invisible, 
which  each  uses  in  his  own  way."  ^ 

Newman's  apology  for  all  this  mixture  of  careless  or 

1  Essay  on  Development,  1st  edition,  chapter  vi.  section  2,  pp. 
358-9. 

2  Lectures  on  Anglican  DifficKlties,  2nd  edition,  lecture  ix.  pp. 
231-2. 

N 


178  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

even  deliberate  evil  with  faith,  is,  that  even  if  the  faith 
aggravates  the  responsibihty  for  the  evil,  which  I 
assume  that  he  would  admit,  though  he  does  not  say  so, 
it  leaves  the  way  open  to  a  much  less  embarrassed  path 
of  repentance  than  is  available  for  evil  done  in  unbelief. 
He  holds  that  it  is  not  the  general  tendency  of  moral 
evil  in  Roman  Catholic  countries  to  disturb  faith.  The 
faith  remains  through  even  many  of  the  worst  stages  of 
corruption  of  the  will,  and  he  thinks  this  a  preferable 
state  of  mind  for  the  mass  of  men,  to  the  unbelief  into 
which  moral  evil  almost  always  plunges  a  Protestant. 
But  by  the  necessity  of  the  case  it  is  not  possible  to 
show  that  this  power  of  assimilation,  in  the  sense  of 
a  half-compromise  with  pagan  rites,  was  ever  really  ex- 
hibited and  sanctioned  in  the  earliest  age  of  the  Church; 
nor  even,  I  think,  that  in  the  apostolic  age  faith  was 
thus  retained  in  its  vividness,  in  separation  from 
holiness  and  love.  That  the  Church  showed  great 
power  of  assimilating  pagan  habits  of  thought,  and  of 
leavening  them  more  or  less — often  rather  less  than 
more — with  her  own  higher  purposes,  is  obvious  enough ; 
but  whether  that  did  not  involve  a  kind  of  toleration 
of  what  is  unholy,  which  the  Apostolic  Church  would 
have  thought  most  reprehensible,  is  extremely  doubtful. 
I  can  hardly  conceive  an  Apostle  acquiescing  in  New- 
man's vivid  presentation  of  super  naturally-minded  but 
pagan-hearted  believers,  as  he  afterwards  gave  it  in  his 
lecture  on  "  The  religious  character  of  Catholic  countries 
no  prejudice  to  the  sanctity  of  the  Church."  I  should 
have  thought  that  Christ  not  only  taught  that  "  If  any 
man  will  do  His  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine 
whether  it  be  of  God  or  whether  I  speak  of  myself;" 
but  also  implied  the  converse — namely,  "If  any  man 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE.      179 

will  not  do  His  will,  he  shall  cease  to  know  of  the 
doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God  or  not."  At  all  events, 
I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  state  of  a  population 
absolutely  believing  in  sacred  truths  which  they  openly 
disregard,  is  even  more  morally  hopeless  than  that  of  a 
population  which  has  gradually  lost  faith  in  the  truths 
it  has  practically  ignored. 

Newman's  fourth  test  of  a  sound  development  is  the 
"  early   anticipation "    of  characteristics    not   fully  de- 
veloped till  much  later;  just  as  we  find  in  great  men's 
childish  character  an  early  anticipation  of  their  most 
striking  mature  characteristics.     Goethe,  for  instance, 
often  displayed  as  a  child  that  deep  sense  of  personal 
dignity  and  of  something  like  authority  which  was  so 
characteristic  of  his  maturity  and  old  age  ;  and  Sir  Walter 
Scott  as  a  child  used  to  delight   his  schoolfellows  by 
telling  them  stories  of  his  own  invention,  just  as  thirty 
years   later   he   delighted   the   whole    world.     Just  so 
Newman  shows  that  in  the  first  age  of  the  Church 
there  is  the  most   remarkable   evidence   of  that   con- 
ception so  fully  developed  and  so  elaborately  applied 
in  the  Catholic  Church  in  later  centuries,  which  treats 
material  things  as  susceptible  of  being  made  the  channels 
of  Divine   grace.     We   are   specially  taught   that  the 
body  as  such,  far  from  being  evil,  was  like  the  whole 
material  creation,  a  Divine  work  and  "  very  good,"  that 
the  Gnostic  dislike  to  admit  that  Christ  had  come  "  in 
the  flesh  "  was  a  fatal  heresy — "  Every  spirit  that  con- 
fesseth  not  that  Christ  Jesus  is  come  in  the  flesh  is 
the  spirit  of  Antichrist."     As  a  consequence,  even  the 
mere  earthly  remains  of  good  men  were  treated  with 
a  spirit  the  very  opposite  of  pagan  shrinking — with  a 
passionate   reverence   and    belief  in   their   sanctifying 


\ 


180  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

influences.  The  very  wood  of  the  cross  on  which 
Christ  suffered  was  regarded  as  full  of  virtue.  And  the 
feeling  for  relics,  for  sacraments,  and  indeed  for  all  the 
physical  objects  which  the  Church  consecrates,  a  feeling 
which  Protestants  regard  as  superstitious,  was,  in  New- 
man's belief,  a  mere  development  of  these  early  indications 
of  respect  for  the  material  channels  of  Divine  grace. 
Newman  treats  the  cultus  of  the  Virgin  Mary  as  only 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  developments  of  this  creed, 
of  which  we  have  the  anticipation  in  the  account  of  the 
Annunciation,  and  of  the  visit  of  Mary  to  Elizabeth,  in 
the  early  chapters  of  Luke's  gospel.  Another  illustration 
of  the  early  anticipation  of  a  form  of  Church  activity 
which  assumed  its  fullest  development  centuries  later, 
is  the  systematic  and  almost  scientific  treatment  of 
theology  to  be  found  in  the  Ignatian  epistles  at  the 
opening  of  the  second  century.  Thus  Ignatius  speaks 
of  Christ  as  "  perfect  man  "  as  well  as  God,  and  therein 
anticipates  the  very  formula  of  that  later  creed  which 
bears  (of  course  improperly)  the  name  of  Athanasius. 

The  fifth  test  of  true  development, "  logical  sequence," 
is  the  one  which  is,  I  fancy,  most  open  to  abuse  in 
dealing  with  matters  so  much  above  us  as  theology. 
To  infer  correctly,  the  mind  should  be  able  to  take  in 
the  full  scope  of  a  premiss.  Even  in  mathematics  it 
is  always  unsafe  to  treat  inferences,  which  are  correct 
when  applied  to  ordinary  cases,  as  justified  when  ap- 
plied beyond  the  limits  of  quantitative  measurement.  It 
is  true,  as  a  rule,  that  if  axx  =  axy,  x  must  be  =  2/,  but 
the  inference  is  quite  false  if  a  happens  to  be  zero; 
otherwise  every  number  would  be  equal  to  every  other 
number,  inasmuch  as  2x0  =  1000x0,  but  yet  it  does 
not  in  the  least  follow  that  2  =  1000.    Just  so  inferences 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  DOCTRINE.     181 

from  principles  which  appear  true  when  we  are  dealing 
with  finite  minds,  are  very  apt  to  be  quite  false  when 
applied  to  an  infinite  mind.  Indeed,  all  the  juggling 
with  "the  Absolute"  and  "the  Infinite"  which  made 
so  much  show  of  scientific  reasoning  in  the  late  Dean 
Mansel's  Bam^ton  Lectures,  was  really  founded  on  the 
fallacy  that  what  would  be  a  legitimate  inference  from 
any  statement  as  to  a  finite  mind,  would  be  an  equally 
legitimate  inference  from  the  same  statement  as  to  an 
infinite  mind. 

Newman's  chief  illustration  of  the  principle  of  "  logical 
sequence"  as  the  test  of  a  true  development,  is  the 
inference  drawn  from  the  condemnation  of  Arian  forms 
of  doctrine,  that  there  is  so  infinite  a  gulf  between  any 
creature  and  God,  that  when  once  the  true  adoration  of 
any  creature  has  been  condemned,  it  becomes  perfectly 
safe  to  render  homage  to  the  saints  and  the  Virgin 
Mary,  since  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  suppose  that  they 
are  reverenced  on  their  own  account,  but  solely  on 
account  of  their  close  union  with  their  Divine  Master. 
The  charge  of  idolatry,  he  says,  becomes  unmeaning 
after  the  condemnation  of  Arius.  All  good  Catholics 
know  that  the  cults  of  the  Virgin  and  the  saints  are 
cults  totally  different  in  principle  from  religious  worship. 
They  are  far  less  to  be  called  idolatrous  than  the  homage 
paid  to  a  constitutional  minister  for  his  influence  with 
a  monarch  is  to  be  called  disloyal,  whereas  it  is  really 
an  implicit  recognition  of  the  true  claim  of  loyalty. 
The  orthodoxy  of  the  subordinate  kind  of  homage  is 
a  "  logical "  inference  from  the  Church's  anathema  on 
the  proper  adoration  of  a  created  being  of  any  kind; 
that  is  Newman's  illustration  of  the  test  of  "  logical 
sequence."     But  is  it  trustworthy  ?     Is  it  true  that  the 


182  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

anathema  on  Arianism  rendered  it  safe  to  make  so 
much  of  the  intercession  of  the  saints  and  the  mother 
of  Jesus  Christ  ?  Are  not  finite  minds  very  apt  to 
accept  in  the  abstract  a  principle  which  they  find  it 
very  difficult  to  realize  in  the  concrete?  Is  it  any 
less  possible  to  preoccupy  our  minds  with  the  influence 
and  benevolence  of  beings  like  ourselves,  to  the  virtual 
exclusion  of  the  higher  acts  of  worship,  solely  because 
we  recognize  in  the  abstract  the  infinitely  superior 
power  and  love  of  God,  than  it  is  to  fill  up  our  minds 
with  "the  care  of  this  world  and  the  deceitfulness  of 
riches,"  only  because  we  recognize  fully  in  the  abstract 
that  these  have  the  power  to  choke  the  word  and  to 
suffocate  its  growth  in  the  heart  ?  Surely  the  real 
danger  of  the  immense  development  which  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  has  given  to  the  intercession  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  and  the  saints,  is,  that  it  tends  to  present 
to  us  the  wills  of  beings  who  in  knowledge  and  limit- 
ations are  like  ourselves,  and  who  are  supposed,  at 
least  by  ignorant  people,  to  be  more  influenced  by  our 
pertinacity  of  entreaty  than  God  would  be,  as  likely 
to  urge  upon  God  what  He  would  otherwise  refuse  to 
do,  and  to  try  to  impose  upon  Him  by  their  entreaties 
their  weaker  forms  of  good-will ;  whereas,  what  ought 
to  be  impressed  on  the  ignorant  is,  that  the  more  com- 
pletely any  finite  being  has  conformed  himself  to  the 
will  of  God,  the  more  resolutely  would  he  refuse  to 
intercede  for  any  favour  not  intrinsically  in  harmony 
with  the  Divine  providence.  "  Logical  sequence  "  may 
be  one  test  of  true  development,  but  unless  you  know 
that  it  has  been  faithfully  apphed  to  the  higher  and 
severer  as  well  as  the  easier  and  milder  aspects  of 
the    original   teaching,  it  may  be    a  test  that   leads 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.     183 

you  into  all  manner  of  worldly  and  degenerate  de- 
velopments. 

The  sixth  test  of  true  development,  "preservative 
additions,"  corresponds  in  theology  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  Law  Courts,  that  they  may  assert  their  dignity 
and  authority  by  punishing  severely  any  "  contempt 
of  Court,"  or  to  the  amendments  adopted  in  some  of 
the  republican  constitutions  of  the  present  day,  which 
provide  safeguards  tending  to  prevent  representative 
bodies  from  arrogating  to  themselves  too  much  of  the 
power  of  the  whole  people,  of  which  a  good  example 
is  the  Swiss  referendum,  which  overrules  the  action 
of  the  representative  bodies  by  a  census  taken  of 
the  wishes  of  the  whole  people  on  some  individual 
issue. 

Newman  gives  as  his  first  example  of  the  "  preservative 
additions  "  of  religious  development,  one  which  seems 
to  be  hardly  a  very  good  example,  because  instead  of  its 
intention  being  to  safeguard  what  has  been  already  re- 
vealed, its  intention  is  to  reveal  something  fresh.  "  We 
know,"  he  says,  "that  no  temper  of  mind  is  acceptable 
in  the  Divine  Presence  but  love ;  it  is  love  which 
makes  Christian  fear  differ  from  servile  dread,  and  true 
faith  differ  from  the  faith  of  devils ;  yet  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Christian  life  fear  is  the  prominent 
evangelical  grace,  and  love  is  but  latent  in  fear,  and 
has,  in  course  of  time,  to  be  developed  out  of  what 
seems  its  contradictory.  Then  when  it  is  developed  it 
takes  that  prominent  place  which  fear  held  before,  yet 
protecting,  not  superseding  it.  Love  is  added,  not  fear 
removed,  and  the  mind  is  but  perfected  in  grace  by 
what  seems  a  revolution.  They  that  sow  in  tears  reap 
in  joy ;  yet  afterwards  still  they  are  '  sorrowful,'  though 


184  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

*  alway  rejoicing.' "  ^  That  is  exquisitely  put,  but  surely 
it  degrades  love  to  speak  of  its  revelation  as  a  mere 
*' preservative  addition"  to  a  Gospel  of  fear.  I  think, 
perhaps,  the  best  illustration  which  Newman  gives  of 
the  "  preservative  addition "  is  thre  foundation  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  for  the  protection  and  development  of 
the  Catholic  Church  as  it  was  in  the  century  in  which 
Ignatius  Loyola  founded  it,  for  it  was  clearly  an  addition, 
and  it  did  tend  to  preserve  the  Church  as  the  Church 
then  was.  Or  perhaps  his  illustration  of  the  use  of  the 
cross  as  a  symbol  of  holy  war,  to  safeguard  the  Gospel  of 
peace,  may  be  considered  a  still  better  instance  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  regard  the  society  founded  by 
Ignatius  Loyola  as  preservative  chiefly  of  existing 
abuses.  "If  light  has  no  communion  with  darkness, 
or  Christ  with  Belial,  what  has  He  to  do  with  Moloch, 
who  would  not  call  down  fire  on  His  enemies,  and  came 
not  to  destroy  but  to  save  ?  Yet  this  seeming  anomaly 
is  buji.'€)ne  instance  of  a  great  law  which  is  seen  in 
developments  generally,  that  changes  which  appear  at 
first  sight  to  contradict  that  out  of  which  they  grew, 
are  really  its  protection  or  illustration.  Our  Lord  Him- 
self is  represented  in  the  Prophets  as  a  combatant 
inflicting  wounds  while  He  received  them,  as  coming 
from  Bozrah  with  dyed  garments,  sprinkled  and  red  in 
His  apparel  with  the  blood  of  His  enemies ;  and  whereas 
no  war  is  lawful  but  what  is  just,  it  surely  beseems 
that  they  who  are  engaged  in  so  dreadful  a  commission 
as  that  of  taking  away  life  at  the  price  of  their  own, 
should  at  least  have  the  support  of  His  Presence,  and 
fight  under  the  mystical  influence  of  His  Name."  ^ 

1  Essay  on  Development^  chap.  viii.  section  2,  p.  429,  1st  edition. 
2  Ibid.  chap.  viii.  section  2,  p.  431. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.     185 

I  need  give  no  illustration  of  Newman's  seventh  test 
of  a  true  development,  "  chronic  continuance."     No  one  » 
denies  the  historical  continuity  of  the  Roman  Catholic   ' 
Church.     The  question  raised  about  her  is  not  that,  but  / 
whether  she  has  fundamentally  changed  her  type,  her  / 
ideal.      That  she   is,   as   the   Protestants   say,  "incor- 
rigible," is   the   best  evidence   that  whether    she   has 
changed  her  type  or  not,  she  has  continued  to  defy  all 
the  assaults  made  upon  her. 

This  remarkable  book  in  which  the  doctrine  of 
development,  treated  many  years  afterwards  so  elabor- 
ately on  its  physiological  side  by  Darwin,  was  antici- 
pated in  a  theological  treatise,  concluded  abruptly  with 
a  postscript  evidently  written  after  October  9th,  1845, 
when  Newman  was  received  at  Littlemore  by  the 
Passionist  Father  Dominic  into  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  The  Oxford  tradition  says,  that  as  Newman, 
month  after  month,  stood  at  his  desk  writing  the  Essay 
on  Development,  he  grew  ever  thinner  and  more„trans- 
parent,  till  at  last,  when  he  suddenly  dropped  his  pen 
and  made  up  his  mind  that  he  had  attained  the  fullest 
conviction  that  he  must  no  longer  delay  his  submission 
to  Rome,  on  peril  of  sinning  against  light,  you  could 
almost  have  seen  through  him.  The  postscript  to  which 
I  refer  is  one  of  those  most  characteristic  passages  by 
which  Newman  will  be  remembered  as  long  as  the 
English  language  endures.  It  is  hardly  as  well  known 
as  the  close  of  the  last  sermon  which  he  preached  as  an 
Anglican,  the  sermon  on  "  The  Parting  of  Friends." 
Nor  is  it  so  exquisite  in  its  pathos.  But  its  absolute 
simplicity  and  appropriateness  to  the  close  of  such  an 
argument  as  this  is  most  impressive.  "  Such,"  he  wrote, 
"  were  the  thoughts  concerning  '  The  Blessed  Vision  of 


186  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Peace  *  of  one  whose  long-continued  petition  had  been 
that  the  Most  Merciful  would  not  despise  the  work  of 
His  own  Hands,  nor  leave  him  to  himself;  while  yet 
his  eyes  were  dim,  and  his  breast  laden,  and  he  could  but 
employ  Reason  in  the  things  of  Faith.  And  now,  dear 
reader,  time  is  short,  eternity  is  long.  Put  not  from 
you  what  you  have  here  found ;  regard  it  not  as  mere 
matter  of  present  controversy ;  set  not  out  resolved  to 
refute  it,  and  looking  about  for  the  best  way  of  doing 
so;  seduce  not  yourself  with  the  imagination  that  it 
comes  of  disappointment,  or  disgust,  ox  restlessness,  or 
wounded  feeling,  or  undue  sensibility,  or  other  weak- 
ness. Wrap  not  yourself  round  in  the  associations  of 
years  past,  nor  determine  that  to  be  truth  which  you 
wish  to  be  so,  nor  make  an  idol  of  cherished  anticipa- 
tions. Time  is  short,  eternity  is  long.  Nunc  dimittis 
servum  tuum,  Domine,  secundum  verbum  tuum  in  pace, 
quia  viderunt  oculi  mei  salutare  tuum."  But  the  "  nunc 
dimittis"  was  premature.  Not  the  half  of  Newman's 
earthly  career  was  run,  though  the  portion  of  it  most 
interesting  to  the  non -Catholic  world  was  at  an  end. 

The  late  Canon  Oakeley  has  given  an  account  of  the 
last  day  of  Newman's  Anglican  life,  which  he  calls  the 
9th  October,  1845.  Dr.  Newman  himself  writes  on  the 
8th  October  from  Littlemore,  that  he  is  expecting  the 
Passionist  Father  Dominic  to  arrive  on  that  evening  to 
receive  him  into  the  Catholic  Church.  Either  Father 
Doininic  was  delayed  a  day,  or  Canon  Oakeley  was  a 
day  wrong  ^  in  his  reckoning,  for  according  to  him  it  was 
the  9th  October,  a  day  of  wild  wind  and  pouring  rain, 
on  which  Father  Dominic,  shabbily  dressed   in  black, 

1  I  see  by  a  letter  of  Newman's  to  Mr.  Allies,  dated  9th  October, 
1845,  that  Canon  Oakeley  was  a  day  wrong. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTEINE.     187 

and  dripping  wet,  arrived  at  Littlemore;  and  it  was 
the  10th  October,  the  day  following  his  arrival,  on  which 
Newman  was  received  into  the  Roman  Catholic  com- 
munion. On  the  evening  of  the  Passionist  father's 
arrival,  Newman,  as  the  story  goes,  flung  himself  at  his 
feet,  saying  that  he  would  not  rise  till  the  father  had 
blessed  him  and  received  him  into  the  Church  of  Christ. 
If  so,  his  mind  must  have  been  wound  up  to  a  very  high 
pitch  of  excitement  before  he  could  thus  have  thrown 
off  the  air  of  reserve  and  reticence  so  specially  his  own. 
The  whole  night  was  spent  in  prayer,  and  on  the  follow- 
ing day  "  the  long  gestation  was  accomplished,"  and  New- 
man was  born  into  the  communion  of  the  one  Christian 
Church  which  has  a  historical  continuity  and  an  external 
organization  as  impressive  and  conspicuous  as  even  his 
heart  could  desire  for  the  depository  of  revealed  truth. 

Before  I  pass  on  to  treat  (very  much  more  shortly) 
the  story  of  Newman's  life  after  the  long  period  of 
doubt  and  hesitation  was  passed,  and  he  had  secured 
for  himself  the  greater  freedom  of  a  position  in  the 
strength  of  which  he  had  full  confidence,  I  must  make 
one  remark  on  the  general  upshot  of  the  essay  which 
contained  the  fruits  of  his  long  hesitation  and  his 
elaborate  research.  What  is  the  value  of  this  Essay  on 
Bemlo'pment  for  the  world  at  large  ?  I  think  it  has 
done  a  great  deal  towards  showing  that  many  of  the 
later  developments  of  the  original  teaching  of  Christ 
and  His  apostles  are  the  genuine  and  natural  outcome 
of  the  supernatural  teaching  given  to  the  primitive 
Church,  but  that  none  the  less  the  disposition  to  assert 
on  the  part  of  one  branch  of  the  Church  too  high  a 
claim  for  its  own  infallibility  and  certainty  of  provi- 
dential guidance,  has  always  been  visible.     Newman's 


188  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

own  semion,  insisting  on  the  great  prophets  granted  to 
a  Church  in  open  schism  with  the  Jewish  Church,  the 
Church  of  Samaria,  is  the  most  instructive  illustration 
of  this  disposition  to  over-estimate  the  infallibility  of  the 
Church,  which  the  Jewish  revelation  could  supply.  It 
is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  that  the  Church  of 
Samaria  could  have  been  what  the  latest  Jewish  teach- 
ing held  it  to  be,  and  could  yet  have  been  the  Church 
of  such  a  prophet  as  Elijah.  And  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  conceive  that  the  Church  of  England  could  be  what 
the  Roman  Catholic  doctors  describe  it  as  being,  and  yet 
the  Church  of  such  teachers  as  Bishop  Butler  or  New- 
man himself.  Does  not  Newman  throughout  exaggerate 
the  claims  of  the  Church  to  unity  and  infallibility  ?  In 
every  age  throughout  the  history  of  revelation  there 
are  distinct  traces  of  the  precipitation  of  the  orthodox 
leaders  of  the  Church  in  these  matters.  In  the  Essay 
on  Development,  Newman  himself  concedes  to  M.  Guizot 
that  dogmatic  principles  were  "  not  so  well  understood 
and  so  carefully  handled  at  first  as  they  were  after- 
wards. In  the  early  period  we  see  traces  of  a  conflict, 
as  well  as  of  a  variety,  in  theological  elements,  which 
were  in  course  of  combination,  but  which  required 
adjustment  and  management  before  they  could  be  used 
with  precision  as  one.  In  a  thousand  instances  of  a 
minor  character,  the  statements  of  the  early  Fathers  are 
but  tokens  of  the  multiplicity  of  openings  which  the 
mind  of  the  Church  was  making  into  the  treasure-house 
of  Truth ;  real  openings,  but  incomplete  or  irregular. 
Nay,  the  doctrines  even  of  hereticaTlBodies^  are  indices 
and  anticipations  of  the  mind  of  the  Church.  As  the  first 
step  in  settling  a  point  of  doctrine  is  to  raise  and  debate 
it,  so  heresies  in  every  age  may  be  taken  as  the  measure 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.     189 

of  the  existing  state  of  thought  in  the  Church,  and  of 
the  movement  of  her  theology ;  they  determine  in  what 
way  the  current  is  setting,  and  the  rate  at  which  it 
flows."  ^  Does  not  that  apply  as  truly  to  the  present 
day  as  to  any  past  day  ?  Can  it  be  doubted  for  a 
moment  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church's  definitions 
on  the  subject  of  the  inspiration  of  Scripture  have  been 
"  incomplete  and  irregular,"  and,  as  I  should  say,  directly 
misleading  ?  Do  not  the  most  learned  Catholics  admit 
and  even  maintain  that  "inspiration"  must  be  taken 
in  quite  a  new  sense  before  the  inspiration  of  the 
Scriptures  ''in  all  their  parts"  can  be  asserted  with 
even  a  semblance  of  truth  ?  Yet  if  that  be  so,  that 
means  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  over- 
leaped the  truth  in  her  deliberate  definitions  and  formal 
decrees,  as  well  as  in  her  ad  interim  pronouncements, 
and  that  just  as  Elijah  was  taught  that  God  had  not 
deserted  the  Church  of  Samaria  in  spite  of  schism  and 
idolatry,  so  God  has  not  abandoned  Churches  which 
Rome  treats  with  mere  contempt,  in  spite  of  their  often 
cold  and  degenerate  worship.  Nevertheless,  I  sincerely 
believe  that  Newman  has  shown  that  many  of  the 
practices  which  were  thought  mere  superstitions  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  worship  are  natural  developments  of 
the  belief  of  the  primitive  Church,  and  not  in  the  least 
inconsistent  with  the  pure  rapture  of  the  primitive 
worship.  Is  there  truer  Christian  worship  anywhere 
than  in  the  Church  of  Rome,  in  spite  of  the  almost 
greedy  traditionalism  with  which  her  most  famous 
teachers  seize  upon  doubtful  and  legendary  elements  of 
pious  rumour  in  bygone  times  to  feed  the  appetite  of 
her  contemplative  orders  ? 

1  Essay  an  Development^  p.  349,  1st  edition,  chap.  vi.  section  2. 


CHAPTER  X. 

NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN   CATHOLIC. 

From  the  moment  when  Newman  became  a  Roman 
Catholic,  the  freest  and  happiest,  though  not  perhaps 
the  most  fascinating,  epoch  of  his  life  may  be  said  to 
have  commenced.  I  do  not  know  that  he  ever  again 
displayed  quite  the  same  intensity  of  restrained  and 
subdued  passion  as  found  expression  in  many  of  his 
Oxford  sermons.  But  in  irony,  in  humour,  in  eloquence, 
in  imaginative  force,  the  writings  of  the  later  and,  as 
we  may  call  it,  the  emancipated  portion  of  his  career 
far  surpass  the  writings  of  his  theological  apprentice- 
ship. As  my  object  has  been  to  sketch  the  growth  of 
his  convictions  with  much  more  care  than  their  out- 
come, I  will  compress  greatly  my  account  of  this  second 
half  of  Newman's  life,  which  comprehends,  however,  the 
most  effective  book  he  ever  wrote,  and  certainly  the 
most  remarkable  of  his  controversial  writings.  For  four 
months  after  his  conversion  he  continued  to  reside 
generally  at  Littlemore,  visiting  Oscott  at  Cardinal 
Wiseman's  invitation  in  November  1845,  only  to  be 
confirmed,  and  not  leaving  Littlemore  and  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford  fully  till  February  1846.  It  was  a 
great  wrench  to  him  to  separate  himself  from  the 
University  to  which  he  had  always  been  warmly  attached, 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  191 

and  where  he  had  pleased  himself  by  thinking  that  he 
should  live  and  die.  And  it  was  all  the  greater  wrench 
that  his  course  was  at  this  time  so  gravely  misunder- 
stood and  so  widely  misrepresented  amongst  his  old 
friends  and  former  colleagues.  Indeed  it  was  twenty 
years  after  his  conversion  before  he  got  the  opportunity 
of  persuading  the  world  that  he  had  acted  only  on 
conviction,  and  on  conviction  very  slowly  formed,  very 
anxiously  reviewed,  and  indeed  for  a  considerable  time 
deliberately  suspended  in  order  that  he  might  adequately 
test  its  force.  For  many  years  after  his  conversion 
"  the  Protestant  tradition,"  as  he  called  it  in  his  lectures 
on  "Catholicism  in  England,"  treated  his  conversion 
as  a  sort  of  conspiracy  deliberately  devised  for  the  sub- 
version of  the  truth.  In  the  first  book  which  Newman 
published  after  he  became  a  Roman  Catholic,  Loss  and 
Gain,  the  story  of  a  conversion  to  the  Church  of  Rome, 
he  describes  the  effect  produced  by  the  rumours  circu- 
lated against  his  young  hero's  Protestantism  on  the  Vice- 
principal  and  Principal  of  his  College.  He  is  refused 
permission  to  reside  in  lodgings  for  the  two  terms  before 
he  takes  his  degree  on  the  ground  of  his  suspected 
Tractarianism ;  and  on  remarking  to  the  Principal,  Dr. 
Bluett,  that  he  cannot  see  what  harm  he  could  do  by 
residing  in  Oxford  lodgings  till  Easter,  Dr.  Bluett  cries 
out  in  astonishment,  "  What,  remain  here,  sir,  with  all 
the  young  men  about?"  And  on  Charles  Reding's 
answering  that  he  does  not  see  why  he  should  be  unfit 
company  for  them,  "  Dr.  Bluett's  jaw  dropped,  and  his 
eyes  assumed  a  hollow  aspect.  '  You  will  corrupt  their 
minds,  sir,'  he  said;  *you  will  corrupt  their  minds.' 
^hen  he  added  in  a  sepulchral  tone,  which  came  from 
the  very  depth  of  his  inside,  '  j^ou  will  introduce  them 


192  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

to  some  subtle  Jesuit,  to  some  subtle  Jesuit,  Mr. 
Reding.'"  This  was  very  much  the  view  taken  for  a 
long  time  of  Dr.  Newman's  own  proceedings  by  those 
who  professed  the  "Protestantism  of  the  Protestant 
Religion."  It  Avas  part  of  a  dark  and  deliberate  plot 
against  English  Protestantism  which  had  been  long 
hatching,  and  would  take  long  to  expose.  Newman 
went  to  Rome  in  October  1846,  and  returned  to  England 
on  Christmas  Eye,  1847.  He  soon  determined  to 
join  the  community  of  St.  Philip  Neri,  the  genial  saint 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  who  was  called  the  Apostle  of 
Rome  during  the  earliest  years  of  the  Reformation. 
St.  Philip  was  a  saint  of  the  world.  It  was  a  saying  of 
his,  "  Oh,  God,  seeing  that  Thou  art  so  infinitely  lov- 
able, why  hast  Thou  given  us  but  one  heart  to  love 
Thee  with,  and  this  so  little  and  so  narrow  ? "  What 
the  ideal  was  which  Newman  set  before  himself  on 
becoming  an  Oratorian  of  St.  Philip's  we  can  judge  best 
from  the  character  of  St.  Philip,  which  he  afterwards 
quoted  in  the  conclusion  of  his  Dublin  lectures  on  "  the 
idea. of  a  University,"  from  Bacci,  the  biographer  of 
St.  Philip  Neri.  "  He  was  all  things  to  all  men.  He 
suited  himself  to  noble  and  ignoble,  young  and  old, 
subjects  and  prelates,  learned  and  ignorant,  and  re- 
ceived those  who  were  strangers  to  him  with  singular 
benignity,  and  embraced  them  with  as  much  love  and 
charity  as  if  he  had  been  a  long  while  expecting  them. 
When  he  was  called  upon  to  be  merry  he  was  so;  if 
there  was  a  demand  upon  his  sympathy  he  was  equally 
ready.  He  gave  the  same  welcome  to  all :  caressing 
the  poor  equally  with  the  rich,  and  wearying  himself 
to  assist  all  to  the  utmost  limits  of  his  power.  In  conse- 
quence of  his  being  so  accessible  and  willing  to  receive 


NEWMAN  AS   EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  193 

all  comers,  many  weDt  to  him  every  day,  and  some  con- 
tinued for  the  space  of  thirty,  nay  forty  years  to  visit 
him  very  often  both  morning  and  evening,  so  that  his 
room  went  by  the  agreeable  nickname  of  the  home  of 
Christian  mirth."  In  his  own  Verses  on  Various 
Occasions'^  Newman  has  given  a  similar  character  of 
"  St.  Philip  in  his  school,"  drawn  in  words  of  his  own — 

"  This  is  the  saint  of  gentleness  and  kindness, 
Cheerful  in  penance,  and  in  precept  winning, 
Patiently  healing  of  their  pride  and  blindness, 
Souls  that  are  sinning. 

This  is  the  saint  who,  when  the  world  allures  us, 
Cries  her  false  wares,  and  opes  her  magic  coffers, 
Points  to  a  better  city,  and  secures  us 
With  richer  offers." 

It  was  evidently  the  naturalness,  the  geniality,  the 
innocent  mirth,  and  the  social  charm  of  St.  Philip  Neri 
that  made  Newman  so  anxious  to  found  an  Enghsh 
branch  of  the  same  order.  His  one  idea,  no  doubt,  both 
in  founding  the  order  and  in  organizing  it,  was  to  get 
a  special  hold  on  educated  minds  in  religious  perplexity, 
but  though  when  the  Brompton  Oratory  was  founded 
as  a  branch  from  the  Oratory  at  Birmingham,  the 
Brompton  Oratorians  made  it  more  of  their  special  work 
to  attack  the  slums  of  that  part  of  London,  Newman 
in  his  work  at  Birmingham  never  in  the  least  neglected 
the  poor.  Indeed  when  in  1849  cholera  broke  out  in  a 
severe  form  at  Bilston,  he  and  the  late  Father  Ambrose 
St.  John  undertook  the  work  of  visiting  the  sick  and 
dying  in  the  most  dangerous  of  the  infected  districts, 
and  discharged  that  difficult  duty  with  the  utmost  zeal. 
Still  he  never  forgot  that  his  special  experience  at 
Oxford  indicated  that  he  was  more  likely  to  affect 
1  Page  306. 

O 


194  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

deeply  the  cultivated  than  the  ignorant,  and  every- 
thing he  published  from  the  time  of  his  conversion 
to  the  present  day  has  been  almost  exclusively  ad- 
dressed to  minds  of  the  same  calibre  and  culture  as 
those  with  which  he  was  familiar  at  Oxford. 

Of  his  experience  as  a  Catholic,  Loss  and  Gain, 
published  in  1848,  was  the  first  fruit.  It  is  hardly  to 
be  called  a  story,  and  Newman  stated  when  he  gave  it 
to  the  public  that  it  was  "  not  founded  upon  fact."  The 
hero  of  it,  who  is  converted  from  the  English  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the  course  of  it,  was  not 
meant  for  any  living  person,  nor  were  any  of  the  other 
characters  sketches  from  life.  But  the  book  has  been 
a  great  favourite  with  me,  almost  ever  since  its  first 
publication,  partly  for  the  admirable  fidelity  with  which 
it  sketches  young  men's  thoughts  and  difficulties,  partly 
for  its  happy  irony,  partly  for  its  perfect  representation 
of  the  academical  life  and  tone  at  Oxford.  Charles 
Reding,  who  is  the  hero  of  it,  is  delineated  as  a  religious- 
minded  young  man,  who  is  eager  for  some  credible  and 
definite  assurance  of  what  he  ought  to  believe  and  what 
he  ought  not.  He  is  sure  that  there  must  be  some  final 
authority  as  to  what  has  been  revealed,  but  he  is  utterly 
perplexed  by  the  conflict  of  views  on  the  subject  in  his 
own  communion.  "  Wouldn't  you  be  glad,"  says  Reding 
to  a  college  friend,  *'  if  St.  Paul  could  come  to  life  ?  I've 
often  said  to  myself,  '  Oh  that  I  could  ask  St.  Paul  this 
or  that ! '"  "  But  the  Catholic  Church  isn't  St.  Paul  quite, 
I  guess,"  said  Sheffield.  "  Certainly  not ;  but  supposing 
you  did  think  it  had  the  inspiration  of  an  Apostle,  as 
the  Roman  Catholics  do,  what  a  comfort  it  would  be  to 
know  beyond  all  doubt  what  to  believe  about  God,  and 
how  to  worship  and  please  Him.    I  mean  yoio  said,  *  I 


NEWMAN  AS   ROMAN   CATHOLIC.  195 

can't  believe  this  or  that ; '  now  you  oiigJit  to  have  said, 
'  I  can't  believe  the  Pope  has  'power  to  decide  this  or 
that.'  If  he  had,  you  ought  to  believe  it,  whatever  it 
is,  and  not  to  say,  '  I  can't  believe.' "  Here  we  see  the 
reflection  of  Newman's  view  of  revelation  as  a  coherent 
system  far  above  man's  intellectual  apprehensions,  which 
he  is  to  believe  as  a  matter  of  duty  rather  than  for 
its  fascinating  or  subduing  power  over  his  mind.  When 
to  this  predisposition,  which  was  certainly  Newman's 
own,  we  add  Reding's  craving  for  penance  and  ascetic 
practices  generally  as  at  least  a  sort  of  satisfaction  for 
the  deep  sense  of  detestation  with  which  he  regarded 
sin  in  himself,  we  need  not  feel  at  all  surprised  that 
even  though  Reding  is  very  far  indeed  from  a  duplicate 
of  Newman,  he  becomes  gradually  more  and  more  re- 
pelled from  the  sober  Anglican  communion,  and  drawn 
towards  that  which  does  lay  down  absolutely  the  dogmas 
which  it  expects  its  children  to  accept,  and  does  supply 
them  with  penances  and  ascetic  discipline  in  plenty.  In 
the  course  of  the  story  there  are  many  happy  sketches 
of  Oxford  society,  such  as,  for  example,  the  sketch  of  the 
evangelical  pietism  which  Mr.  Freeborn  pours  forth  at 
Bateman's  breakfast,  or  the  sketch  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Brown- 
side's  prim  and  pompous  Broad  Church  University 
sermon,  which  said  "  one  word  in  favour  of  Nestorius, 
two  for  Abelard,  three  for  Luther,  that  great  spirit  who 
saw  that  churches,  creeds,  rites,  forms,  were  nought  in 
religion,  and  that  the  inward  spirit  of  faith,  as  he  him- 
self expressed  it,  was  all  in  all."  Again,  there  is  one 
very  impressive  passage  not  taken  from  Oxford  life,  in 
which  Newman  makes  the  young  Oxford  convert  who 
precedes  Reding  in  passing  over  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church    insist   on   the   vast    difference    between    the 


196  CAKDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Protestant  and  the  Roman  Catholic  conception  of 
worship,  the  former  consisting  in  the  pouring  forth  of 
the  human  desire  for  Divine  help,  the  latter  in  the 
Mass,  which  is  the  "evocation"  rather  than  the  "in- 
vocation "  of  the  Eternal,  while  the  worshippers  all 
watch  for  a  great  event,  indeed  for  a  great  advent, 
waiting,  like  the  paralytics  beside  the  pool  of  Bethesda, 
for  "the  moving  of  the  water."  Very  striking  and 
beautiful  too  in  its  tenderness,  and  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  is  Newman's  delineation  of  the  manner  in  which 
Reding's  mother  takes  leave  of  him  when  he  announces 
that  he  is  going  to  join  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
She  holds  out  her  hand  coldly  to  him  at  first,  reproaches 
him  with  leaving  his  early  friends,  reproaches  herself  for 
having  made  too  much  of  him,  and  intimates  that  he  is 
leaving  his  own  communion  only  because  he  likes  leaving 
it.  When  Charles  replies,  that  in  the  Apostles'  time 
men  were  expected  to  give  up  all  for  Christ,  she  retorts 
that  this  means  that  they  of  the  English  Church  are 
heathens,  and  she  thanks  him  in  a  frigid  manner  for 
such  a  comparison.  Then  she  begins  to  refer  to  his 
"  dear  father,"  her  dead  husband,  and  breaks  down,  and 
he  throws  himself  on  his  knees  and  lays  his  head  in 
her  lap.  The  feelings  of  the  mother  altogether  ex- 
tinguish the  hurt  pride  of  the  woman,  and  the  scene 
ends  with  her  stroking  his  hair  as  she  used  to  do  when 
a  child,  and  letting  her  tears  stream  over  his  face. 
Except  in  Callista,  Newman  has  written  nothing  in  the 
form  of  fiction  more  touching  than  this  passage.  The 
close  of  the  book,  where  all  the  religious  impostors 
crowd  into  Charles's  lodging,  one  after  another,  as 
candidates  for  his  adhesion,  when  it  is  rumoured  that 
he  is  dissatisfied  with  the  Church  of  England,  and  is 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  197 

leaving  it  for  another  communion,  is  a  shade  too  farcical. 
It  may  perhaps  represent  some  portion  of  Newman's 
personal  experience,  but  then  Newman  was  a  distin- 
guished man  before  he  left  the  Anglican  communion, 
and  his  movements  would  be  watched  by  all  sorts  of 
religious  speculators.  Charles  Eeding  could  not  possibly 
have  been  known  to  all  these  vigilant  touters  for 
religious  adherents.  He  was  a  young  Oxonian,  and 
nothing  more. 

The  next  indication  we  have  of  the  movements  of 
Newman's  mind  after  he  joined  the  Roman  Catholic 
communion,  was  the  volume  of  Sermons  addressed  to 
Mixed  Congregations,  first  published  in  1849,  and  dedi- 
cated to  the  Right  Rev.  Nicholas  Wiseman,  not  as  yet 
at  that  time  made  a  cardinal.  These  sermons  have  a 
definite  tone  and  genius  of  their  own ;  they  have  more 
in  them  of  the  enthusiasm  of  a  convert  than  any  other 
of  Newman's  publications,  and  altogether  contain  the 
most  eloquent  and  elaborate  specimens  of  his  eloquence 
as  a  preacher,  and  of  his  sense,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  of  the 
religious  advantages  of  his  position  as  a  spokesman  of 
the  great  Church  of  Rome.  They  represent  more 
adequately  Dr.  Newman  as  he  was  when  he  first  felt 
himself  "  unmuzzled "  (to  use  the  phrase  wired  by  Mr. 
Gladstone  after  the  University  of  Oxford  had  rejected 
him,  and  he  was  no  longer  bound  by  the  special 
etiquettes  of  a  University  representative),  than  any 
other  of  his  writings ;  and  though  they  have  not  to 
me  quite  the  delicate  charm  of  the  reserve,  and  I  might 
almost  say  the  shy  passion,  of  his  Oxford  sermons,  they 
represent  the  full-blown  blossom  of  his  genius,  while 
the  former  show  it  only  in  bud. 

There,  as  in  almost  all  his  subsequent  works,  he  gave 


198  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

full  rein  to  his  wonderful  power  of  irony,  and  even  the 
passages  of  tender  eloquence,  exquisite  as  they  are,  seem 
to  me  inferior  in  force  to  the  passages  of  scornful  irony 
in  which  he  analyzes  the  worldly  view  of  worldly  things. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  second  sermon,  that  on  "  Neglect 
of  Divine  Calls  and  Warnings,"  and  compare  the  passage, 
powerful  and  fearful  as  it  is,  in  which  he  delineates 
the  agony  of  a  soul  which  finds  itself  lost,  with  the 
passage  in  which  he  delineates  what  the  world  is 
meantime  saying  of  the  person  "now  no  more,"  who 
is  undergoing  the  first  pangs  of  this  dreadful  and  end- 
less suffering.  "  Impossible  ! "  he  supposes  the  lost  one 
to  exclaim  on  hearing  the  Judge's  sentence ;  "  I  a  lost 
soul !  I  separated  from  hope  and  from  peace  for  ever  I 
It  is  not  I  of  whom  the  Judge  so  spake  !  There  is 
a  mistake  somewhere ;  Christ,  Saviour,  hold  Thy  hand 
— one  minute  to  explain  it !  My  name  is  Demas ;  I 
am  but  Demas,  not  Judas,  or  Nicholas,  or  Alexander, 
or  Philetus,  or  Diotrephes.  What !  Eternal  pain  for 
me !  Impossible !  it  shall  not  be."  And  so  he  goes 
on  till  the  reader  drops  the  book  in  horror  and  sickness 
of  heart. 

Now  take  the  suggestion  of  what  the  world  may  be 
saying  of  him  who  is  thus  helplessly  wrestling  against 
unendurable  anguish,  and  refusing  to  believe  in  its 
reality.  "  The  man's  name,  perhaps,  is  solemnly  chanted 
forth,  and  his  memory  decently  cherished  among  his 
friends  on  earth.  His  readiness  in  speech,  his  fertility 
in  thought,  his  sagacity  or  his  wisdom,  are  not  for- 
gotten. Men  talk  of  him  from  time  to  time ;  they 
appeal  to  his  authority ;  they  quote  his  words ;  perhaps 
they  even  raise  a  monument  to  his  name,  or  write  his 
history.     *  So  comprehensive  a  mind  !  such  a  power  of 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  199 

throwing  light  on  a  perplexed  subject,  and  bringing 
ideas  or  facts  into  harmony  !  *  *  Such  a  speech  it  was 
that  he  made  on  such  and  such  an  occasion;  I  hap- 
pened to  be  present,  and  never  shall  forget  it ' ;  or,  *  It 
was  the  saying  of  a  very  sensible  man ' ;  or,  '  A  great 
personage  whom  some  of  us  knew ' ;  or,  '  It  was  a  rule 
with  a  very  worthy  and  excellent  friend  of  mine,  now 
no  more ' ;  or,  '  Never  was  his  equal  in  society,  so  just 
in  his  remarks,  so  versatile,  so  unobtrusive' ;  or,  *  I  was 
fortunate  to  see  him  once  when  I  was  a  boy ' ;  or,  '  So 
great  a  benefactor  to  his  country  and  to  his  kind';  or, 
'His  discoveries  so  great';  or,  'His  philosophy  so  pro- 
found.' 0  vanity,  vanity  of  vanities,  all  is  vanity ! 
What  profiteth  it,  what  profiteth  it,  his  soul  is  in  hell." 
Or  take  the  passage  in  the  sixth  sermon,  on  "God's 
Will  the  end  of  Life,"  in  which  Dr.  Newman  paints  the 
vulgar  social  ambitions  of  a  citizen's  life.  "  You  think  it 
the  sign  of  a  gentleman  to  set  yourselves  above  religion; 
to  criticize  the  religious  and  professors  of  religion ;  to 
look  at  Catholic  and  Methodist  with  impartial  contempt; 
to  gain  a  smattering  of  knowledge  on  a  number  of 
subjects ;  to  dip  into  a  number  of  frivolous  publications, 
if  they  are  popular ;  to  have  read  the  latest  novel ;  to 
have  heard  the  singer,  and  seen  the  actor  of  the  day ; 
to  be  up  to  the  news;  to  know  the  names  and,  if 
so  be,  the  persons  of  public  men;  to  be  able  to  bow 
to  them;  to  walk  up  and  down  the  street  with  your 
heads  on  high,  and  to  stare  at  whatever  meets  you,  and 
to  say  and  do  worse  things,  of  which  these  are  but  the 
symbol.  And  this  is  what  you  conceive  you  have  come 
upon  earth  for !  The  Creator  made  you,  it  seems,  O  my 
children,  for  this  work  and  office,  to  be  a  bad  imitation 
of  polished  ungodliness,  to  be  a  piece  of  tawdry  and 


200  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

faded  finery,  or  a  scent  which  has  lost  its  freshness  and 
does  but  offend  the  sense."  ^ 

The  extraordinary  wealth  of  detail  with  which  New- 
man conceives  and  realizes  the  various  sins  and  miseries 
of  the  human  lot  has,  perhaps,  never  been  illustrated  in 
all  his  writings  with  so  much  force  as  in  the  wonderful 
sixteenth  sermon  on  "  The  Mental  Sufferings  of  our  Lord 
in  His  Passion  " — a  sermon  before  which  even  the  rich- 
ness and  wealth  of  Jeremy  Taylor's  imagination  looks 
poor  in  the  comparison.  ''  It  is  the  long  history  of  a 
world,  and  God  alone  can  bear  the  load  of  it.  Hopes 
blighted,  vows  broken,  lights  quenched,  warnings  scorned, 
opportunities  lost ;  the  innocent  betrayed,  the  young 
hardened,  the  penitent  relapsing,  the  just  overcome, 
the  aged  failing ;  the  sophistry  of  misbelief,  the  wilful- 
ness of  passion,  the  obduracy  of  pride,  the  tyranny  of 
habit,  the  canker  of  remorse,  the  wasting  fever  of 
care,  the  anguish  of  shame,  the  pining  of  disappoint- 
ment, the  sickness  of  despair ;  such  cruel,  such  pitiable 
spectacles,  such  heartrending,  revolting,  detestable,  mad- 
dening scenes;  nay,  the  haggard  faces,  the  convulsed 
lips,  the  flushed  cheek,  the  dark  brow  of  the  willing 
victims  of  rebellion,  they  are  all  before  Him  now,  they 
are  upon  Him  and  in  Him.  They  are  with  Him 
instead  of  that  ineffable  peace  which  has  inhabited  His 
soul  since  the  moment  of  His  conception.  They  are 
upon  Him ;  they  are  all  but  His  own ;  He  cries  to  His 
Father  as  if  He  were  the  criminal,  not  the  victim;  His 
agony  takes  the  form  of  guilt  and  compunction.  He  is 
doing  penance,  He  is  making  confession.  He  is  exer- 
cising contrition  with  a  reality  and  a  virtue  infinitely 

^  Discourses  addressed  to  Mixed  Congregations y  3rd  edition,  pp. 
132,  133. 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  201 

greater  than  that  of  all  saints  and  penitents  together ; 
for  He  is  the  One  Victim  for  us  all,  the  sole  Satisfaction, 
the  real  Penitent,  all  but  the  real  sinner."  ^ 

There  you  see  the  Catholic  system  taking  full  hold 
of  Newman,  and  inspiring  him  with  a  sense  of  its 
authority  and  grandeur.  Certainly  no  one  could  ever 
have  gathered  from  the  Gospels  or  Epistles  that  all  this 
infinitude  of  anguish,  quite  alien  to  the  special  agony  of 
the  situation,  and  gathered  out  of  all  lands,  from  the 
east  and  from  the  west,  from  the  north  and  from  the 
south,  and  from  all  forms  and  phases  of  human  trans- 
gression, piled  itself  up  in  the  spirit  of  our  Lord,  and 
pressed  upon  Him,  during  His  Passion,  with  the  close- 
ness of  almost  personal  remorse.  Yet  so  the  Fathers  of 
the  Church  had  analyzed  the  mystery  of  the  Passion, 
and  so  Newman  unquestioningly  accepted  it.  What- 
ever he  has  thought  that  he  "  ought "  to  believe,  he  has 
always  found  the  means,  not  only  to  believe,  but  to 
interpret  to  himself  with  a  unique  vivacity  and  intensity 
of  conception. 

Never  again  did  Newman  give  the  rein  so  fully  to 
what  we  may  call  the  pious  impressions,  by  the  aid  of 
which  the  Catholic  Fathers  have  interpreted  and  illus- 
trated the  theology  of  the  Church,  as  he  did  in  this 
volume.  In  the  sermons,  for  example,  exquisite,  even 
if  too  elaborate,  as  compositions,  on  The  Glories  of  Mary 
for  the  sake  of  her  Son,  he  almost  rivalled  the  passion 
of  Italian  and  French  devotion  to  the  mother  of  our 
Lord,  and  anticipated  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  of  the  Virgin,  some  years  before  it  had  been 
defined.     I   know   no   passage   in   Newman   which  so 

^  Discourses  addressed  to  Mixed  Co7igregations,  3rd  edition,  pp. 
394,  395. 


202  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

thoroughly  bewilders  the  Protestant  imagination,  in  its 
unwillingness  to  accept  vague  tradition  of  the  most 
distant  and  uncertain  origin,  as  evidence  for  historic 
fact,  as  that  in  which  he  deals  with  the  death  of  the 
mother  of  Christ.  "  Though  she  died  as  well  as  others, 
she  died  not  as  others  die ;  for  through  the  merits  of 
her  Son,  by  A\liom  she  was  what  she  was,  by  the  grace 
of  Christ  which  in  her  had  anticipated  sin,  which  had 
filled  her  with  light,  which  had  purified  her  flesh  from 
all  defilement,  she  had  been  saved  from  disease  and 
malady,  and  all  that  weakens  and  decays  the  bodily 
frame."  Then  he  goes  on  to  say: — "She  died,  but 
her  death  was  a  mere  fact,  not  an  effect;  and  when 
it  was  over,  it  ceased  to  be.  She  died  that  she  might 
live;  she  died  as  a  matter  of  form  or  (as  I  may  call 
it)  a  ceremony,  in  order  to  fulfil  what  is  called  the 
debt  of  nature — not  primarily  for  herself,  or  because 
of  sin,  but  to  submit  herself  to  her  condition,  to  glorify 
God,  to  do  what  her  Son  did ;  not,  however,  as  her  Son 
and  Saviour,  with  any  suffering  for  any  special  end ; 
not  with  a  martyr  s  death,  for  her  martyrdom  had  been 
in  living ;  not  as  an  atonement,  for  man  could  not  make 
it, — and  One  had  made  it,  and  made  it  for  all, — but  in 
order  to  finish  her  course  and  to  receive  her  crown. 
And  therefore  she  died  in  private.  It  became  Him 
who  died  for  the  world  to  die  in  the  world's  sight ;  it 
became  the  great  Sacrifice  to  be  lifted  up  on  high  as  a 
light  that  could  not  be  hid.  But  she,  the  lily  of  Eden, 
who  had  always  dwelt  out  of  the  sight  of  man,  fittingly 
did  she  die  in  the  garden's  shade,  and  amid  the  sweet 
flowers  in  which  she  had  lived.  Her  departure  made 
no  noise  in  the  world.  The  Church  went  about  her 
common  duties — preaching,  converting,  suffering ;  there 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  203 

were  persecutions,  there  was  fleeing  from  place  to  place, 
there  were  martyrs,  there  were  triumphs;  at  length 
the  rumour  spread  through  Christendom  that  Mary  was 
no  longer  upon  earth.  Pilgrims  went  to  and  fro ;  they 
sought  for  her  relics,  but  they  found  them  not.  Did 
she  die  at  Ephesus  ?  or  did  she  die  at  Jerusalem  ? 
Accounts  varied,  but  her  tomb  could  not  be  pointed 
out,  or  if  it  was  found,  it  was  open ;  and  instead  of  her 
pure  and  fragrant  body,  there  was  a  growth  of  lilies 
from  the  earth  which  she  had  touched.  So,  inquirers 
went  home  marvelling,  and  waiting  for  further  light. 
And  then  the  tradition  came  wafted  westward  on  the 
aromatic  breeze,  how  that  when  the  time  of  her  dis- 
solution was  at  hand,  and  her  soul  was  to  pass  in 
triumph  before  the  judgment-seat  of  her  Son,  the 
Apostles  were  suddenly  gathered  together  in  one  place, 
even  in  the  Holy  City,  to  bear  part  in  the  joyful  cere- 
monial ;  how  that  they  buried  her  with  fitting  rites ; 
how  that  the  third  day  when  they  came  to  the  tomb, 
they  found  it  empty,  and  angelic  choirs  with  their  glad 
voices  were  heard  singing  day  and  night  the  glories  of 
their  risen  Queen.  But  however  we  feel  towards  the 
detail  of  this  history  (nor  is  there  anything  in  it  which 
will  be  unwelcome  and  difficult  to  piety),  so  much  cannot 
be  doubted,  from  the  consent  of  the  whole  Catholic 
world  and  the  revelations  made  to  holy  souls,  that,  as 
is  befitting,  she  is,  soul  and  body,  with  her  Son  and  God 
in  heaven,  and  that  we  are  enabled  to  celebrate,  not 
only  her  death,  but  her  Assumption."  ^ 

I  gather  from  this,  that  Newman  thinks  the  story 
of  the  apostolic  gathering  to  bury  the  Virgin  Mary  a 

1  Discourses  addressed   to  Mixed    Congregations,  3rd   edition, 
pp.  437—439. 


/ 


204  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

pious  opinion  "not  unwelcome  or  difficult  to  piety" 
(though  I  should  have  supposed  that  a  very  great  deal 
which  it  is  not  unwelcome  to  pious  people  to  believe 
is  yet  very  difficult  for  them  to  believe  on  what 
amounts  to  hardly  any  evidence  at  all),  but  that  he 
regards  the  Assumption  of  her  body  to  heaven  as  a 
fact  sufficiently  attested  by  "  the  consent  of  the  whole 
Catholic  world,  and  the  revelations  made  to  holy  souls." 
How  does  "  the  consent  of  the  whole  Catholic  world " 
to  a  tradition  of  which  we  cannot  in  the  least  trace  the 
origin,  hidden  as  it  is  in  the  obscure  depths  of  the  first 
century,  justify  us  in  accepting  as  historic  fact  that 
of  which  there  is  absolutely  not  a  morsel  of  historic 
evidence  ?  Does  the  consent  of  the  whole  heroic 
age  of  Greece  guarantee  the  historic  truth  of  the 
labours  of  Hercules?  or  the  consent  of  the  whole 
mediaeval  age  of  Europe  prove  the  historic  truth  of 
the  existence  of  fairies  ?  And  have  we  any  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  assent  of  the  Church  of  one  century 
to  belief  in  a  fact  which  could  only  have  had  any  legiti- 
mate attestation  in  another  century,  is  a  good  ground 
for  accepting  that  fact  ?  The  '*  revelations  given  to 
holy  souls"  might  of  course  be  evidence  if  there  were 
proof  of  the  perfect  truthfulness  and  sobriety  of  these 
individual  seers,  and  independent  evidence  of  their 
supernatural  discernment  of  other  facts,  which  at  the 
time  at  which  they  were  discerned  were  beyond  the 
range  of  their  senses,  but  afterwards  verified.  But  what 
is  to  ordinary  minds  marvellous  in  this  passage  is  the 
apparent  acquiescence  of  so  great  a  thinker  as  Newman 
in  the  doctrine  that  "the  mind  of  the  Church"  is  not 
only  empowered  to  develop  doctrine,  but  to  attest  minor 
historic  facts  of  which  it  has  had  no  evidence  apparently, 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  205 

and  this  on  no  better  ground  than  that  such  facts  would 
not  be  unwelcome  to  it  if  the  evidence  were  forthcoming^. 
Surely  the  readiness,  and  even  eagerness,  with  which 
it  assimilates  a  tradition  of  which  no  one  can  find  the 
smallest  trace  in  the  only  age  in  which,  if  a  genuine 
tradition  at  all,  it  must  have  originated,  is  a  ground  for 
distrust  rather  than  for  trust.  How  can  Newman  say 
that  a  good  Catholic  "  ought "  to  believe  a  fact  of  this 
kind, — not  even  a  "  dogmatic  fact,"  not  even  a  fact  in- 
timately bound  up  with  a  cardinal  doctrine  of  the 
Church, — on  the  strength  merely  of  the  consent  of  the 
Church  in  a  devotional  but  uncritical  age,  to  celebrate 
a  festival  of  the  Assumption  ?  One  might  as  well  say 
that  an  Oxonian  of  University  College  "ought"  to 
believe  that  King  Alfred  founded  that  college,  because 
such  a  belief  is  grateful  to  the  minds  of  University 
College  men,  though  the  best  historians  regard  it  as 
quite  baseless.  To  me  this  is  just  the  most  suspicious 
of  all  the  aspects  of  Roman  Catholicism,  that  the  Church 
shows  such  avidity  in  accepting  as  facts,  devotional 
dreams  of  apparently  very  late  and  ambiguous  origin. 
Some  French  Roman  Catholics  use  a  devotion  to  St. 
Mary  Magdalene  which  contains  entreaties  for  her 
intercession  addressed  in  the  following  terms, — "  Vous 
qui  avez  pass^  de  long  jours  dans  une  solitude  affreuse 
vivant  miraculeusement — vous  qui  sept  fois  par  jour, 
^tiez  port^e  par  les  anges  au  sommet  du  ciel,"  &c. 
Now  I  do  not  suppose  for  a  moment  that  these  devotions 
have  the  authority  of  the  Church,  in  the  sense  in  which 
the  teaching  that  the  body  of  the  mother  of  our  Lord 
was  raised  on  the  third  day  and  ascended  to  heaven 
has  that  authority.  But  I  do  say  that  utterly 
unauthentic   statements   of    this    kind    are   welcomed 


206  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

generally  in  Catholic  devotion,  and  that,  though  they 
may  contain  harmless  as  well  as  baseless  assertions 
considered  in  themselves,  it  is  not  a  perfectly  harmless 
state  of  mind  to  be  eager  to  feed  the  imagination  on 
dreams  of  which  there  is  no  evidence  at  all,  beyond  the 
readiness  of  popular  assemblies  to  adopt  as  serious  truth 
the  statements  made  in  picturesque  legends  of  which 
the  origin  is  entirely  lost.  I  can  understand,  and  to  a 
certain  extent  I  believe,  that  inspiration  not  only  guides 
and  overrules  our  ideal  of  the  spiritual  life,  but  moulds 
the  attitude  of  the  Church  to  whom  it  is  revealed,  and 
guards  the  development  of  its  mind  in  bringing  out 
the  meaning  of  doctrine  to  questioning  believers. 
But  the  contention  that  the  Church  may  bear  authori- 
tative witness  for  the  first  time  in  a  late  age  to  facts 
of  which  no  early  trace  remains,  to  facts  not  only  not 
admitting  of  the  smallest  comparison  in  the  amount  of 
evidence  producible  for  them  with  the  facts  of  the 
Gospel,  but,  on  the  contrary,  having  upon  them  the 
most  marked  characteristics  of  popular  legends,  seems 
to  me  one  of  the  most  startling  to  which  Newman  ever 
gave  cordial  assent.  We  might  almost  as  well  regard 
the  old  village  plays  on  St.  George  and  the  Dragon 
as  satisfactory  evidence  of  that  mythical  contest.  Is 
it  not  true  that  the  Roman  Catholic  disposition  to  treat 
opinions  as  "pious"  for  which  there  is  nothing  approach- 
ing to  evidence,  lends  sanction  to  the  doctrine  that 
"  the  wish  to  believe  "  in  the  reality  of  a  certain  event 
is  a  good  reason  for  actually  believing  in  it  ?  This  is 
the  side  of  Newman's  mind  with  which  the  greater 
number  of  his  fellow  -  countrymen  feel  the  greatest 
possible  difficulty  in  sympathizing. 

The  next  landmark  in  Newman's  history  as  a  Roman 


NEWMAN  AS   ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  207 

Catholic  was  his  delivery  and  publication  in  1850  of 
the  Lectures  on  Anglican  Difficulties,  delivered  in  the 
Oratory  in  King  William  Street,  Strand,  where  Toole's 
Theatre  now  stands,  at  all   or   almost  all  of  which  I 
was   present  as  a  young  man.     In  matter  and   style 
alike  these  lectures  were  marked  by  all  the  signs  of 
his  singular  literary  genius.    They  were  simpler  and  less 
ornate  than  the  Sermo7is  addressed  to  Mixed  Congregations, 
and  more  exquisite  in  form  as  well  as  more  complete 
in   substance  than   the   Essay   on   Development,  which 
was  written  under  the  heavy  pressure  of  the  dreaded 
and  anticipated  rupture  between  himself  and  the  Church 
of  his   baptism.      I   think   the   Lectures   on   Anglican 
Difficulties  was  the  first  book  of  Newman's  generally 
read  amongst  Protestants,  in  which  the  measure  of  his 
literary   power   could   be   adequately   taken.      In   the 
Oxford  sermons  there  had  been  of  course  more  room 
for  the  expression  of  religious  feeling  of  a  higher  type, 
and    frequently    there    had    been    more    evidence    of 
depth  and  grasp  of  mind ;  but  here  was  a  great  subject 
with  which  Newman  was  perfectly  intimate,  giving  the 
fullest  scope   to   his   powers  of  orderly  and    beautiful 
exposition,   and    opening   a   far   greater   range   to   his 
singular  genius  for  gentle  and  delicate  irony  than  any- 
thing which  he  had  previously  written.     It  is  a  book, 
however,  which  adds  but  little  to  our  insight  into  his 
mind,  though   it   adds   much  to   our   estimate  of  his 
powers,  and  I  must  pass  it  by  with  only  brief  notice. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  impression  which  his  voice  and 
manner,    which    opened    upon   me   for   the    first   time 
in   these   lectures,  made   on   me.     Never  did   a  voice 
seem   better   adapted   to   persuade  without   irritating. 
Singularly  sweet,  perfectly    free   from   any  dictatorial 


208  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

note,  and  yet  rich  in  all  the  cadences  proper  to  the 
expression  of  pathos,  of  wonder,  and  of  ridicule,  there 
was  still  nothing  in  it  that  any  one  could  properly 
describe  as  insinuating,  for  its  simplicity,  and  frank- 
ness, and  freedom  from  the  half- smothered  notes  which 
express  indirect  purpose,  was  as  remarkable  as  its 
sweetness,  its  freshness,  and  its  gentle  distinctness.  As 
he  described  the  growth  of  his  disillusionment  with  the 
Church  of  England,  and  compared  it  to  the  trans- 
formation which  takes  place  in  fairy  tales  when  the 
magic  castle  vanishes,  the  spell  is  broken,  "  and  nothing 
is  seen  but  the  wild  heath,  the  barren  rock,  and  the 
forlorn  sheep-walk,"  no  one  could  have  doubted  that 
he  was  describing  with  perfect  truth  the  change  that 
had  taken  place  in  his  own  mind.  "  So  it  is  with  us," 
he  said,  "  as  regards  the  Church  of  England,  when  we 
look  in  amazement  on  that  we  thought  so  unearthly, 
and  find  so  commonplace  or  worthless.  Then  we 
perceive  that  aforetime  we  have  not  been  guided  by 
reason,  but  biased  by  education,  and  swayed  by 
affection.  We  see  in  the  English  Church,  I  will  not 
merely  say,  no  descent  from  the  first  ages,  and  no 
relationship  to  the  Church  in  other  lands,  but  we  see 
no  body  politic  of  any  kind;  we  see  nothing  more  or 
less  than  an  establishment,  a  department  of  govern- 
ment, or  a  function  or  operation  of  the  State — without 
a  substance, — a  mere  collection  of  officials,  depending  on 
and  living  in  the  supreme  civil  power.  Its  unity  and 
personality  are  gone,  and  with  them  its  power  of 
exciting  feelings  of  any  kind.  It  is  easier  to  love  or 
hate  au  abstraction  than  so  tangible  a  frame-work  or 
machinery."  ^ 

^  Lectures  on  Anglican  Difficulties,  p.  7,  2nd  edition. 


NEWMAN  AS   KOMAN    CATHOLIC.  209 

This  is,  of  course,  an  exaggerated  view.  It  is  not 
true  that  the  State  can  do  what  it  pleases  with  the 
English  Church,  can  modify  its  theology  or  change  its 
liturgy  at  will ;  but  it  is  still  less  true  that  the  Church 
can  do  as  she  will  without  the  consent  of  the  State. 
The  English  Church  is  an  amalgam  of  two  alien 
organizations,  not  the  organized  form  of  a  religious 
society.  "Elizabeth,"  said  Newman,  "boasted  that 
she  *  tuned  its  pulpits ' ;  Charles  forbade  discussions  on 
predestination;  George  on  the  Holy  Trinity;  Victoria 
allows  differences  on  Holy  Baptism."  The  dialogue 
which  Newman  constructed  in  his  fourth  lecture 
between  the  Tractarian  and  the  State,  to  illustrate 
this  view,  was  one  of  the  most  effective  pieces  of  irony 
I  ever  heard.  I  may  briefly  condense  it.  "Why  should 
any  man  in  Britain,"  asks  a  Tract,  "  fear  or  hesitate 
boldly  to  assert  the  authority  of  the  Bishops  and 
pastors  of  the  Church  on  grounds  strictly  evangelical 
and  spiritual  ?  "  "  Reverend  Sir,"  answered  the  Primate 
to  a  protest  against  a  Bishop  elect  accused  of  heresy, 
'•  it  is  not  within  the  bounds  of  any  authority  possessed 
by  me  to  give  you  an  opportunity  of  proving  your 
objections;  finding  therefore  nothing  in  which  I  could 
act  in  compliance  with  your  remonstrance,  I  proceeded, 
in  the  execution  of  my  office,  to  obey  her  Majesty's 
mandate  for  Dr.  Hampden's  consecration  in  the  usual 
form."  "  Are  we  contented,"  asks  another  Tract,  "  to 
be  accounted  the  mere  creation  of  the  State,  as  school- 
masters and  teachers  may  be,  as  soldiers  or  magistrates, 
or  other  public  officers  ?  Did  the  State  make  us  ? 
Can  it  unmake  us  ?  Can  it  send  out  missionaries  ? 
Can  it  arrange  dioceses  ? "  "  William  the  Fourth," 
answers  the  first  magistrate  of  the  State,  *'  by  the  grace 

P 


210  CARDINAL  NEWMAlJ. 

of  God  of  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  King,  Defender  of  the  Faith,  to  all  to  whom 
these  presents  shall  come,  greeting;  we  having  great 
confidence  in  the  learning,  morals,  and  probity  of  our 
well-beloved  and  venerable  William  Grant  Broughton, 
do  name  and  appoint  him  to  be  Bishop  and  ordinary 
pastor  of  the  See  of  Australia."  "  Confirmation  is  an 
ordinance,"  says  the  Tract,  "  in  which  the  Bishop  wit- 
nesses Christ.  .  .  .  The  Bishop  is  His  figure  and  likeness 
when  he  lays  his  hands  on  the  heads  of  children. 
Then  Christ  comes  to  them  to  confirm  in  them  the 
grace  of  baptism."  "  And  we  do  hereby  give  and  grant 
to  the  said  Bishop  of  Australia,"  proceeds  his  Majesty, 
"  and  his  successors,  Bishops  of  Australia,  full  power  and 
authority  to  confirm  those  that  are  baptized  and  come 
to  years  of  discretion."  "Moreover,"  says  the  Tract, 
"  the  Bishop  rules  the  Church  here  below,  as  Christ  rules 
it  above.  .  .  .  He  is  Christ's  instrument."  "  And  we 
do  by  these  presents  give  and  grant  to  the  said  Bishop 
and  his  successors.  Bishops  of  Australia,  full  power  and 
authority  to  admit  into  the  holy  orders  of  deacon  and 
priest  respectively  any  person  whom  he  shall  deem 
duly  qualified."  "  The  Bishop  speaks  in  me,"  says  the 
Tract,  "as  Christ  wrought  in  him,  and  as  God  sent 
Christ.  Thus  the  whole  plan  of  salvation  hangs  together 
— Christ  the  true  mediator ;  His  servant  the  Bishop,  His 
earthly  likeness;  mankind  the  subjects  of  His  teaching; 
God  the"  author  of  salvation.  And  the  Queen  answers, 
*  We  do  hereby  signify  to  the  most  reverend  Father  in 
God,  William,  Lord  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  our 
nomination  of  the  said  Augustus,  requiring,  and  by  the 
faith  and  love  whereby  he  is  bound  unto  us,  command- 
ing the  said  most  reverend  Father  in  God  to  ordain 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN   CATHOLIC.  211 

and  consecrate  the  said  Augustus.'  And  the  con- 
secrated prelate  echoes  from  across  the  ocean  against 
the  Catholic  pastor  of  the  country,  '  Augustus,  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  the  favour  of  Queen  Victoria,  Bishop.'"^ 
Indeed  this  whole  lecture  delivers  one  of  the  most 
powerful  attacks  ever  opened  on_the  Anglican  theory 
of  the  Church  as  independent  of  the  State.  INot  less 
powerful  was  Newman's  delineation,  in  the  fifth  lecture, 
of  the  collapse  of  the  Anglican  theory  of  the  Church 
when  applied  to  practice.  The  Anglicans,  he  said, 
"  had  reared  a  goodly  house,  but  their  foundations  were 
falling  in.  The  soil  and  the  masonry  both  were  bad. 
The  Fathers  would  protect  '  Romanists '  as  well  as 
extinguish  Dissenters.  The  Anglican  divines  would 
misquote  the  Fathers  and  shrink  from  the  very  doctors 
to  whom  they  appealed.  The  Bishops  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  were  shy  of  the  Bishops  of  the  fourth, 
and  the  Bishops  of  the  nineteenth  were  shy  of  the 
Bishops  of  the  seventeenth.  The  Ecclesiastical  Courts 
upheld  the  sixteenth  century  against  the  seventeenth, 
and,  unconscious  of  the  flagrant  irregularities  of  Pro- 
testant clergymen,  chastised  the  mild  misdemeanours 
of  Anglo-Catholic.  Soon  the  living  rulers  of  the 
Establishment  began  to  move.  There  are  those  who, 
reversing  the  Roman  maxim,  are  wont  to  shrink  from 
the  contumacious,  and  to  be  valiant  towards  the  sub- 
missive ;  and  the  authorities  in  question  gladly  availed 
themselves  of  the  power  conferred  on  them  by  the 
movement  against  the  movement  itself.  They  fear- 
lessly handselled  their  Apostolical  weapons  against  the 
Apostolical  party.    One  after  another,  in  long  succession, 

^  Lectures  on  Anglican  Difficulties,  pp.  89—91,  2nd  edition. 


21^  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

they  took  up  their  song  and  their  parable  against  it. 
It  was  a  solemn  war-dance  which  they  executed  round 
victims,  who,  by  their  very  principles,  were  bound  hand 
and  foot,  and  could  only  eye,  with  disgust  and  per- 
plexity, this  most  unaccountable  movement  on  the 
part  of  these  '  holy  Fathers,  the  representatives  of  the 
Apostles  and  the  Angels  of  the  Churches.'  It  was  the 
beginning  of  the  end."  ^ 

The  lectures  were  much  more  powerful  in  attack  than 
in  defence.  Those  of  which  it  was  the  object  to  show 
that  the  Anglican  Church  was  essentially  Erastian,  and 
was  not  one  which  could  ever  satisfy  the  ideal  of  the 
Tractarians,  were  simply  demonstrative ;  the  lectures  of 
which  it  was  the  intention  to  remove  the  objections  felt 
towards  the  Roman  Catholic  communion  were  partly 
defective,  partly  inadequate.  They  did  not  deal  at  all 
with  what  seems  to  me  the  greatest  of  all  objections 
to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  the  indifference  she 
shows  to  reasonable  criticisms,  even  in  her  most  solemn 
acts,  such  as  the  sanction  given  to  utterly  unhistorical 
facts  in  the  feast  of  the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  Mary, 
and  the  sanction  given  to  the  doctrine  of  the  plenary 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  decrees  of  the 
Council  of  Trent  and  (subsequently)  of  the  Council  of 
the  Vatican.  On  the  other  hand,  the  eighth  and  ninth 
lectures  on  the  "  Political  state  of  Catholic  countries  no 
prejudice  to  the  sanctity  of  the  Church,"  and  the 
"Religious  character  of  Catholic  countries  no  prejudice 
to  the  sanctity  of  the  Church,"  raise,  I  think,  at  least  as 
many  difficulties  as  they  remove.  And  in  effect  they 
almost  concede  that  comparative  want  of  self-reliance 

*  Lectures  on  Anglican  Difficulties,  pp.  125-26,  lecture  V. 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN    CATHOLIC.  213 

and  self-control  in  matters  both  political  and  religious 
which  certainly  characterizes  Catholic  countries,  as 
distinguished  from  those  Catholic  communities  which 
exist  in  the  heart  of  Protestant  countries,  and  which 
are  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  religious  opponents. 
Newman's  apology  for  the  political  and  religious  state 
of  Ireland  as  given  in  1850  seems  even  less  effective, 
indeed  much  less  effective,  when  read  in  1890  than  it 
seemed  then.  Almost  all  that  Ireland  has  gained 
since  1850,  she  has  gained  by  the  resolute  ignoring 
of  Catholic  principles ;  and  all  that  she  has  lost,  she 
has  lost  by  the  resolute  ignoring  of  Catholic  principles. 
And  though  the  gain  may  be  considerable  politically, 
I  fear  the  moral  loss  far  outweighs  the  political  gain. 

The  Lectures  on  Catholicism  in  England^  delivered 
and  published  in  the  year  of  the  first  great  Exhibition, 
1851,  need  not  detain  me  for  more  than  a  few  lines. 
They  represent  very  effectively  the  force  of  the  "  Pro- 
testant tradition"  as  it  was  in  1851,  though  what  was 
truly  enough  said  then,  now  enormously  exaggerates 
the  force  of  that  tradition,  the  difference  being  largely 
due  to  Newman's  personal  influence,  exerted  partly 
through  the  publication  of  these  lectures,  though  in  a 
far  greater  degree  through  the  publication  of  his  religious 
autobiography  thirteen  years  later.  The  Lectures  on 
Catholicism  in  England  depicted  very  powerfully  the 
nonsensical  and  fanatical  side  of  Protestantism,  though 
they  did  not  do  justice  to  the  grounds  of  offence  found 
by  sober  and  accurate-minded  men  in  the  teaching  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Communion.  There  are  passages 
in  these  lectures  which  pass  the  limits  of  irony,  and 
approach  the  region  of  something  like  controversial  farce, 
yet  farce  of  no  common  order  of  power.     Where,  for 


214  CAKDINAL  NEWMAN. 

example,  could  we  find  a  more  exquisitely  humorous 
and   yet   a  truer  description   than   Newman  gives   of 
the  mode  in  which  the  re-establishment  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  hierarchy  in  this  country  had  been  received  by 
English  Protestants  in  the  preceding  year  ?     "  Heresy, 
and    scepticism,   and    infidelity,   and    fanaticism    may 
challenge"  the  Established  Church,  he  said,  "in  vain; 
but  fling  upon  the  gale  the  faintest  whisper  of  Catholic- 
ism, and  it  recognizes  by  instinct  the  presence  of  its 
connatural   foe.      Forthwith,  as   during   the  last  year, 
the  atmosphere   is  tremulous  with  agitation,  and  dis- 
charges   its    vibrations   far   and  wide.      A   movement 
is  in  birth  which  has  no  natural  crisis  or  resolution. 
Spontaneously  the  bells  of  the  steeples  begin  to  sound. 
Not  by  an  act  of  volition,  but  by  a  sort  of  mechanical 
impulse,  bishop  and  dean,  archdeacon  and  canon,  rector 
and  curate,  one  after  another,  each  on  his  high  tower, 
off  they  set,  swinging  and  booming,  tolling  and  chiming, 
with  nervous  intenseness,  and  thickening  emotion,  and 
deafening  volume,  the  old  ding-dong  which  has  scared 
town  and  country  this  weary  time  ;  tolling  and  chiming 
away,  jingling  and  clamouring,  and  ringing  the  changes 
on  their  poor  half-dozen  notes,  all  about  *  the  Popish 
aggression,'  'insolent  and   insidious,'  'insidious  and  in- 
solent,' *  insolent  and  atrocious,' '  atrocious  and  insolent,' 
*  atrocious,   insolent,   and   ungrateful,'    *  ungrateful,  in- 
solent, and  atrocious,' '  foul  and  offensive,'  *  pestilent  and 
horrid,'  '  subtle  and  unholy,'  '  audacious  and  revolting,' 
'  contemptible  and  shameless,'  *  malignant,'   '  frightful,' 
*mad,'  'meretricious,'  bobs  (I  think   the  ringers   call 
them),  bobs,  and  bobs  royal,  and  triple  bob-majors  and 
grandsires — to  the  extent  of  their  compass,  and  the  full 
ring  of  their  metal,  in  honour  of  Queen  Bess,  and  to 


NEWxMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  215 

the   confusion   of  the    Pope   and   the   j)rinces   of   the 
Church."  ' 

Probably  the  most  important  of  the  immediate  results 
of  this  course  of  lectures  was  the  action  for  libel  brouirht 
by  Dr.  Achilli  against  Newman,  for  the  picture  painted 
of  him  in  the  fifth  lecture  on  "  The  Popular  Inconsistency 
of  the  Protestant  View."  Dr.  Achilli,  who  professed  to 
be  a  convert  from  Komanism,  was  accused  by  the  Papal 
Government  of  a  grossly  irregular  life,  and  Newman 
used  the  offences  of  which  that  Government  believed 
him  to  be  guilty  as  illustrations  of  the  sources  from 
which  the  Protestant  tradition  derives  its  knowledge  of 
the  Catholic  faith.  The  charges  were  flatly  denied  by 
Dr.  Achilli,  who  declared  that  his  real  sin  in  the  eyes  of 
the  Papal  Government  was  his  heterodoxy,  and  though 
Newman  brought  a  large  number  of  witnesses  to  support 
his  statements,  the  British  jury,  directed  by  the  late 
Lord  Campbell,  was  not  disposed  to  be  satisfied  with 
evidence  which  ran  counter  to  the  Protestant  tradition 
of  the  day.  The  general  impression  even  of  non- 
Catholic  culture  at  the  time  was  not  favourable  to  the 
impartiality  of  Lord  Campbell's  charge,  but  it  fell  in 
with  the  temper  of  the  middle  classes  of  that  day,  and 
gave  the  jury  a  good  excuse  for  their  verdict,  that  the 
main  accusations  had  not  been  justified  to  their 
satisfaction.  The  costs  amounted  to  £12,000,  and 
were  paid  by  a  Catholic  subscription  from  all  parts  of 
the  world;  even  the  soberer  view  among  Protestants 
was  not  for  the  most  part  in  harmony  with  the  verdict 
or  with  the  attitude  of  the  judge.  Nevertheless, 
another  period  of  eleven  years  elapsed  before  an  attack 

1  Lectures  on  Catholicism  in  England,  1st  edition,  lecture  ii., 


pp.  73,  74. 


216  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

of  a  different  character,  proceeding  from  the  pen  of  a 
very  different  assailant,  gave  Dr.  Newman  the  oppor- 
tunity of  achieving  the  greatest  triumph  of  his  life,  so 
far  as  regards  his  influence  over  men  of  theological 
tendencies  quite  different  from  his  own. 

In  1852  Newman  was  sent  to  Dublin,  to  inaugurate 
there  the  Roman  Catholic  University  teaching,  which 
has  been  struggling  into  existence — more  or  less  feebly 
— ever  since.  The  lectures,  or  "  Discourses  "  rather, 
on  The  Idea  of  a  University,  which  he  delivered  and 
published  on  this  occasion,  are  full  of  graceful  and  in- 
structive thought;  and  indeed  gave  an  impulse  to  the 
comprehension  of  true  University  culture,  which  had,  I 
believe,  a  very  great  effect  in  stimulating  the  reforms 
which  soon  afterwards  took  place  in  the  Universities 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  though  they  have  not  often 
been  traced  home  to  this  origin.  The  reason  why  the 
influence  of  these  remarkable  "  Discourses  "  (they  were 
too  much  of  academical  "  Discourses,"  to  my  mind,  and 
therefore  did  not  do  full  justice  to  that  exquisite  ease 
of  manner  which  is  usually  the  greatest  literary  charm 
of  Dr.  Newman's  writings)  on  the  movements  which 
so  soon  afterwards  took  place  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
was  missed,  was  that  their  chief  design — namely,  to  bring 
out  the  importance  of  Theology  as  the  uniting  bond  of 
all  the  sciences — was  directly  in  antagonism  to  the 
reforming  movement  in  the  English  Universities,  where 
theological  considerations  —  and  those  of  a  dry  and 
formal  kind — had  long  been  more  mixed  up  with  the 
motives  determining  the  choice  of  teachers  in  other 
branches  of  study,  than  they  ought  to  have  been.  But 
what  is  forgotten  is,  that  these  discourses  enforced  with 
the  utmost  power  the  true  purpose  of  liberal  education. 


NEWMAN   AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  217 

that  it  is  a  pursuit  of  knowledge  for  the  sake  of 
knowledge,  and  not  for  the  value  of  any  of  the  fruits 
or  applications  of  knowledge,  however  important. 
Newman  earnestly  repudiated  the  notion  that  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge  is  merely  subsidiary  even 
to  religion.  On  the  contrary,  his  general  position 
throughout  these  discourses  is,  that  Theology  is  essential 
to  true  University  study,  because  it  is  a  branch  of  true 
knowledge,  and  indeed  the  most  real  and  the  most 
important  of  all  the  branches  of  true  knowledge,  since 
it  harmonizes  and  connects  all  the  other  studies  and 
sciences,  and  gives  them  their  due  subordination  in 
relation  to  the  purposes  of  life. 

At  that  time  Newman  had  a  difficult  task  to  achieve 
in  persuading  the  Roman  Catholic  prelates  of  Ireland 
that  University  teaching,  in  the  sense  in  which  Newman 
understood  and  advocated  it,  was  of  the  greatest  possible 
importance  to  all  true  Catholics  who  had  to  deal  with 
the  greater  intellectual  forces  of  the  world,  besides  that, 
in  fact,  such  culture  gives  them  for  the  first  time  true 
possession  of  their  own  minds.  The  Catholic  prelates 
knew  how  much  there  is  in  liberal  education,  of  a 
tendency  to  subvert  faith,  and  this  they  justly  feared. 
They  did  not  know  how  much  there  is  in  the  world, 
without  liberal  education,  that  has  the  same  tendency  in 
a  still  higher  degree ;  they  had  not  grasped  the  fact  that 
the  uneducated  mind  is  utterly  unable  to  understand 
the  true  proportions  of  things,  and  magnifies  immensely 
the  significance  of  the  first  difiiculties  or  paradoxes  with 
which,  in  the  study  of  religion,  it  is  brought  face  to  face. 
To  prelates  in  such  a  state  of  mind  as  this  there  must 
have  been  food  for  very  useful  and  perhaps  rather 
painful  reflection  in  such  considerations  as  these  which 


218  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

the  Rector  of  their  infant  University  pressed  upon  them 
with  his  wonted  vivacity  and  energy.  "Even  if  we 
could,  still  we  should  be  shrinking  from  our  plain  duty, 
gentlemen,  did  we  leave  out  literature  from  education. 
For  why  do  we  educate  except  to  prepare  for  the 
world  ?  Why  do  we  cultivate  the  intellect  of  the 
many  beyond  the  first  elements  of  knowledge,  except 
for  this  world  ?  Will  it  be  much  matter  in  the  world 
to  come  whether  our  bodily  health,  or  whether  our  in- 
tellectual strength,  was  more  or  less,  except  of  course  as 
this  world  is  in  all  its  circumstances  a  trial  for  the  next  ? 
If  then  a  University  is  a  direct  preparation  for  this 
world,  let  it  be  what  it  professes.  It  is  not  a  convent ; 
it  is  not  a  seminary ;  it  is  a  place  to  fit  men  of  the 
world  for  the  world.  We  cannot  possibly  keep  them 
from  plunging  into  the  world,  with  all  its  ways  and 
principles  and  maxims,  when  their  time  comes ;  but 
we  can  prepare  them  against  what  is  inevitable ;  and  it 
is  not  the  way  to  learn  to  swim  in  troubled  waters  never 
to  have  gone  into  them.  Proscribe,  I  do  not  merely  say 
particular  authors,  particular  works,  particular  passages, 
but  Secular  Literature  as  such;  cut  out  from  your 
class-books  all  broad  manifestations  of  the  natural  man ; 
and  these  manifestations  are  waiting  for  your  pupil's 
benefit  at  the  very  doors  of  your  lecture-room  in  living 
and  breathing  substance.  They  will  meet  him  there  in 
all  the  charm  of  novelty,  and  all  the  fascination  of 
genius  or  of  amiableness.  To-day  a  pupil,  to-morrow 
a  member  of  the  great  world ;  to-day  confined  to  the 
lives  of  the  Saints,  to-morrow  thrown  upon  Babel — 
thrown  on  Babel  without  the  honest  indulgence  of  wit 
and  humour  and  imagination  having  ever  been  per- 
mitted  to   him,   without    any   fastidiousness   of   taste 


NEWMAN  AS   KOMAN  CATHOLIC.  219 

wrought  into  him,  without  any  rule  given  him  for 
discriminating  *the  precious  from  the  vile/  beauty 
from  sin,  the  truth  from  the  sophistry  of  nature,  what 
is  innocent  from  what  is  poison.  You  have  refused  him 
the  masters  of  human  thought,  who  would  in  some 
sense  have  educated  him,  because  of  their  incidental 
corruption ;  you  have  shut  up  from  him  those  whose 
thoughts  strike  home  to  our  hearts,  whose  words  are 
proverbs,  whose  names  are  indigenous  to  all  the  world, 
who  are  the  standard  of  the  mother  tongue,  and  the 
pride  and  boast  of  their  countrymen.  Homer,  Ariosto, 
Cervantes,  Shakespeare,  because  the  old  Adam  smelt 
rank  in  them ;  and  for  what  have  you  reserved  him  ? 
You  have  given  him  a  '  liberty  unto '  the  multitudinous 
blasphemy  of  his  day ;  you  have  made  him  free  of  its 
newspapers,  its  reviews,  its  magazines,  its  novels,  its 
controversial  pamphlets,  of  its  Parliamentary  debates, 
its  law  proceedings,  its  platform  speeches,  its  songs, 
its  drama,  its  theatre,  of  its  enveloping,  stifling  atmo- 
sphere of  death.  You  have  succeeded  but  in  this — in 
making  the  world  his  University."^ 

I  have  often  wished  that  we  could  have  had  as 
frank  an  account  of  the  impression  made  upon  Newman 
by  his  continuous  residence  in  Dublin  for  several  years, 
and  his  intercourse  with  the  Irish  prelates,  as  we  have 
of  that  little  tour  of  Carlyle  in  Ireland,  which  took  place 
about  the  time  of  Newman's  first  residence  there.  Of 
course  we  never  shall  have  any  such  record,  for  Newman 
was  too  prudent  as  well,  I  imagine,  as  too  modest  to 
write  down  cursory  impressions  of  the  value  of  which 
he  himself  would  have  been  no  doubt  extremely  sceptical. 

^  Discourse  IX,  §  8. 


220  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

But  if  we  could  have  such  a  record,  it  might,  I  think, 
considerably  outweigh  the  value  of  Carlyle's  brilliant 
but  inconsiderate  and  rather  violent  characterizations 
of  the  Irish  people  and  Irish  scenes. 

It  was  while  he  was  still  in  Ireland  that  Newman 
finished  the  little  work  which  seems  to  me  the  most 
perfect  and  singular  in  spiritual  beauty,  excepting 
perhaps  the  Dream  of  Gerontius,  that  he  has  written, 
Callista.  "  It  is  an  attempt,"  he  said  in  his  preface, "  to 
imagine  and  express  the  feelings  and  mutual  relations 
of  Christians  and  heathens  at  the  period  to  which  it 
belongs,^  and  it  has  been  undertaken  as  the  nearest 
approach  which  the  author  could  make  to  a  more 
important  work  suggested  to  him  from  a  high  ecclesi- 
astical quarter."  Callista  was  begun,  he  tells  us,  in  the 
early  spring  of  1848,  probably  soon  after  Loss  and  Gain 
was  finished ;  but  after  sketching  the  character  and 
fortunes  of  Juba,  the  half- African  youth  (whose  father,  a 
Roman  soldier,  is  a  languid  Christian,  while  his  mother 
is  a  heathen  sorceress),  in  whom  Newman  made  a 
powerful  attempt  to  realize  the  significance  of  demoni- 
acal possession  as  it  was  conceived  and  held  in  the 
early  centuries  of  the  Christian  era,  he  stopped,  as  he 
says,  "  from  sheer  inability  to  devise  personages  or 
incidents."  "  He  suddenly  resumed  the  thread  of  his 
story  shortly  after  St.  Mary  Magdalene's  day,"  in 
1855,  and  when  it  was  finished  it  v/as  published  anony- 
mously. The  secret  of  the  authorship,  however,  oozed 
out,  and  an  edition  was  soon  published  with  Newman's 
name.  It  has  never  attained  the  popularity  which 
it  seems  to  me  to  deserve,  partly  perhaps  because  the 
framework  of  the  story  involves   a  certain   amount  of 

1  The  middle  of  the  third  century. 


NEWMAN  AS   KOMAN   CATHOLIC.  221 

antiquarian  disquisition,  which  fatigues  ordinary  readers 
— Hke  the  idol-seller's  discourse  to  his  nephew  on  the 
different  kinds  of  Roman  marriage — and  partly  because 
the  sentiment  of  the  book  is  of  too  exalted  a  kind  to 
make  its  way  to  the  heart  of  a  hasty  reader  in  search  of 
exciting  incident.  Yet  it  is  not  wanting  in  very  striking 
and  even  sensational  incidents.  The  invasion  of  the 
locusts  is  described  with  all  the  imaginative  power  of  a 
great  genius;  the  sudden  madness  which  seizes  upon 
Juba  when  his  mother  curses  and  bewitches  him,  is 
painted  with  extraordinary  force ;  and  it  would  be 
hard  to  delineate  a  popular  riot  involving  persecution 
and  martyrdom  with  more  strength  and  pathos. 

After  all,  however,  the  great  triumph  of  the  book  is 
the  delineation  of  the  fair  Greek,  herself  a  sculptor  of 
idols,  who  has  so  passionate  a  love  of  Greek  idealism, 
and  so  deep  a  sense  that  there  is  some  vision  of  truth 
beyond  the  Greek  idealism  for  which  her  heart  yearns 
in  vain.  The  strange  and  apparently  almost  capricious 
resentment  with  which  she  meets  Agellius's  offer  of 
marriage,  because  it  lowers  him  in  her  eyes  by  making 
it  evident  that  his  Christian  faith  was  but  an  unreal 
affair,  and  quite  consistent  with  the  ordinary  devotion 
to  the  passions  and  affections  of  time  and  sense  of 
which  she  had  seen  so  much,  is  painted  with  the  full 
force  of  Newman's  genius.  I  know  nothing  in  all 
fiction  more  delicate,  more  spiritual,  more  fascinating 
than  the  story  of  Callista's  conversion  and  death.  The 
reproaches  she  heaps  on  Agellius  for  not  clearly  dis- 
criminating between  his  love  for  her  and  his  wish  for 
her  conversion, — which  she  calls  "speaking  one  word 
for  his  Master  and  two  for  himself," — and  the  deep 
disappointment  with  which  she  discovers,  or  fancies  she 


222  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

discovers,  that  Agellius  is  after  all  a  good  deal  more 
taken  up  with  her  and  her  beauty  than  with  the  faith 
which  she  had  hoped  to  have  found  the  one  great  reality 
of  his  existence,  seem  to  me  in  many  respects  better  ex- 
pressions of  the  true  passion  and  significance  of  New- 
man's own  unique  and  single-hearted  life,  than  anything 
else  which  he  has  written.  "'If,  as  you  imply,'  she 
says,  '  my  wants  and  aspirations  are  the  same  as  yours, 
what  have  you  done  towards  satisfying  them  ?  What 
have  you  done  for  that  Master  towards  whom  you  now 
propose  to  lead  me  ?  No,'  she  continued,  starting  up, 
'you  have  watched  those  wants  and  aspirations  for 
yourself,  not  for  Him;  you  have  taken  interest  in 
them,  you  have  cherished  them,  as  if  you  were  the 
author,  you  the  object  of  them.  You  profess  to  believe 
in  One  true  God,  and  to  reject  every  other;  and  now 
you  are  implying  that  the  Hand,  the  Shadow  of  that 
God  is  on  my  mind  and  heart.  Who  is  this  God  ? 
where  ?  how  ?  in  what  ?  Oh,  Agellius,  you  have  stood 
in  the  way  of  Him,  ready  to  speak  of  yourself,  using 
Him  as  a  means  to  an  end.'  '  0,  Callista,'  said  Agellius 
in  an  agitated  voice,  when  he  could  speak,  '  do  my  ears 
hear  aright  ?  do  you  really  wish  to  be  taught  who 
the  true  God  is  ? '  '  No ;  mistake  me  not,'  she  cried 
passionately,  '  I  have  no  such  wish.  I  could  not  be 
of  your  rehgion.  Ye  gods,  how  have  I  been  deceived  ! 
I  thought  every  Christian  was  like  Chione.  I  thought 
there  could  not  be  a  cold  Christian.  Chione  spoke  as 
if  a  Christian's  first  thoughts  were  good-will  to  others, 
as  if  his  state  were  of  such  blessedness  that  his  dearest 
heart's  wish  was  to  bring  others  into  it.  Here  is  a 
man  who,  so  far  from  feeling  himself  blest,  thinks  I 
can  bless  him  ;  comes  to  me,  me,^CalIista,  a  herb  of  the 


NEWMAN  AS    ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  223 

field,  a  poor  weed  exposed  to  every  wind  of  heaven 
and  shrivelling  before  the  fierce  sun — to  me  he  comes 
to  repose  his  heart  upon.  But  as  for  any  blessedness 
he  has  to  show  me,  why,  since  he  does  not  feel  any 
himself,  no  wonder  he  has  none  to  give  away.  I 
thought  a  Christian  was  superior  to  time  and  place, 
but  all  is  hollow.  Alas  !  alas  !  I  am  young  in  life  to  feel 
the  force  of  that  saying  with  which  sages  go  out  of  it, 
"Vanity  and  hollowness!"  Agellius,  when  I  first  heard 
you  were  a  Christian,  how  my  heart  beat !  I  thought 
of  her  who  was  gone ;  and  at  first  I  thought  I  saw  her 
in  you,  as  if  there  had  been  some  magical  sympathy 
between  you  and  her;  and  I  hoped  that  from  you  I 
might  have  learned  more  of  that  strange  strength  which 
my  nature  needs,  and  which  she  told  me  she  possessed. 
Your  words,  your  manner,  your  looks  were  altogether 
different  from  others  who  came  near  me.  But  so  it 
was;  you  came  and  you  went,  and  came  again;  I 
thought  it  reserve,  I  thought  it  timidity,  I  thought  it 
the  caution  of  a  persecuted  sect ;  but  oh !  my  dis- 
appointment when  first  I  saw  in  you  indications  that 
you  were  thinking  of  me  only  as  others  think,  and  felt 
towards  me  as  others  may  feel ;  that  you  were  aiming 
at  me,  not  at  your  God ;  that  you  had  much  to  tell  of 
yourself,  but  nothing  of  Him !  Time  was  I  might  have 
been  led  to  worship  you,  Agellius ;  you  have  hindered 
it  by  worshipping  mej  "  ^ 

And  when  she  is  in  prison  on  suspicion  of  being  a 
Christian,  and  has  refused,  she  hardly  knows  why,  to 
burn  incense  to  the  Emperor,  and  a  Greek  philosopher 
has  been  persuaded   to  come  to  her  cell   to  convince 

^  Chapter  xi. 


224  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

her  of  the  unreasonableness  of  her  proceeding,  the 
same  fine  passion  bursts  forth  again  with  still  more 
definiteness  and  significance.  "  After  a  time  Callista 
said, '  Polemo,  do  you  believe  in  one  God  ? '  *  Certainly/ 
he  answered,  'I  believe  in  one  eternal,  self-existing 
something.'  '  Well,'  she  said,  '  I  feel  that  God  within 
my  heart,  I  feel  myself  in  His  presence.  He  says 
to  me,  "  Do  this,  don't  do  that."  You  may  tell  me 
that  this  dictate  is  a  mere  law  of  my  nature,  as  to 
joy  or  to  grieve.  I  cannot  understand  this.  No,  it  is 
the  echo  of  a  person  speaking  to  me.  Nothing  shall 
persuade  me  that  it  does  not  ultimately  proceed  from 
a  person  external  to  me.  It  carries  with  it  its  proof  of 
its  Divine  origin.  My  nature  feels  towards  it  as  towards 
a  person.  When  I  obey  it,  I  feel  a  satisfaction ;  when 
I  disobey,  a  soreness,  just  as  I  feel  in  pleasing  or  offend- 
ing some  revered  friend.  So  you  see,  Polemo,  I  believe 
in  what  is  more  than  a  mere  "  something."  I  believe 
in  what  is  more  real  to  me  than  sun,  moon,  stars,  and 
the  fair  earth,  and  the  voice  of  friends.  You  will  say, 
Who  is  He?  Has  He  ever  told  you  anything  about 
Himself  ?  Alas  !  no  !  the  more's  the  pity !  But  I 
will  not  give  up  what  I  have  because  I  have  not  more. 
An  echo  implies  a  voice,  a  voice  a  speaker.  That 
speaker  I  love  and  I  fear.'  Here  she  was  exhausted, 
and  overcome  too,  poor  Callista,  with  her  own  emotions. 

*  O  that  I  could  find  Him,'  she  exclaimed  passionately. 

*  On  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left  I  grope,  but  touch 
Him  not.  Why  dost  Thou  fight  against  me,  why  dost 
Thou  scare  and  perplex  me,  O,  First  and  only  Fair  ?  I 
have  Thee  not  and  I  need  Thee.^  She  added,  *  I  am  no 
Christian,  you  see,  or  I  should  have  found  Him ;  or  at 
least  I  should  say  I  had  found  Him.'     '  It  is  hopeless/ 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN   CATHOLIC.  225 

said  Polemo  to  Aristo,  in  much  disgust,  and  with  some 
hauteur  of  manner ;  *  she  is  too  far  gone.  You  should 
not  have  brought  her  to  this  place.' "  ^  That  is,  I  think, 
something  more  than  a  delineation  of  "  the  mutual  re- 
lation of  Christians  and  heathens  "  in  the  third  century. 
It  is  a  delineation  of  that  pure  flame  of  passion  in 
Newman's  own  heart  and  life  which  made  him  "rest 
in  the  thought  of  two,  and  two  only,  supreme  and 
luminously  self-evident  beings — myself  and  my  Creator." 
To  me  Callista  has  always  seemed  the  most  com- 
pletely characteristic  of  Newman's  books.  Many  of 
them  express  with  greater  power  his  intellectual 
delicacy  of  insight,  and  his  moral  intensity,  but  none, 
unless  it  be  The  Dream  of  Geroniius,  expresses  as 
this  does  the  depth  of  his  spiritual  passion,  the 
singular  wholeness,  unity,  and  steady  concentration  of 
purpose  connecting  all  his  thoughts,  words,  and  deeds. 
And  yet  it  is  not,  and  I  think  will  never  be,  the  most 
popular  of  his  books.  That  fate  was  reserved  for  his 
reply  to  Mr.  Kingsley's  attack  on  him  on  account  of  the 
sanction  he  had  lent,  or  which  Mr.  Kingsley  supposed 
him  to  have  lent,  to  the  doctrine  that  "  truth  is  no 
virtue."  I  have  often  wondered  that  Kingsley  had 
never  been  sensible  of  the  fascination  of  Newman's 
deep  religious  nature,  an  intensity  of  which  there  was 
certainly  no  slight  measure  in  himself.  He  too,  like 
Newman,  was  a  genuine  poet,  though  a  poet  of  a  very 
different  type.  Again,  he  too,  like  Newman,  had  felt  the 
deepest  interest  in  "  the  mutual  relations  of  Christians 
and  heathens "  in  the  early  centuries  of  Christianity, 
and  had  attempted,  as  Newman  did,  to  delineate  it  in 
his  story  of  Hypatia. 

1  Callista,  chap,  xxvii. 

Q 


226  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

But  there  was  something  headlong  about  Kingsley, 
as  there  is  something  essentially  reserved  and  reticent 
about  Newman,  and  there,  I  fancy,  was  the  secret  of 
the  repulsion  between  them.  Kingsley's  ideal  always 
tended  somewhat  towards  surrender  to  the  glory  of 
action  and  passion,  towards  embodiment  in  life,  towards 
glow,  and  emphasis,  and  self-expansion.  He  had  an 
odd  theory,  too,  that  a  hearty  English  squire  who  does 
his  duty,  not  only  to  the  land,  but  to  the  tenants  and 
the  labourers  on  his  estate,  is  the  nearest  thing  to  a 
saint  which  the  world  can  produce,  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
imagine  any  ideal  more  different  from  Newman's.  As 
far  as  I  can  judge,  Kingsley  and  Newman  have  both 
been  supremely  truthful  men,  and  Newman,  I  should 
say,  though  far  the  subtler  and  less  easily  understood 
of  the  two,  not  by  any  means  less  truthful  than  his 
rather  random  assailant. 

In  Macmillans  Magazine  for  January  1864,  which  (as 
usual  with  January  magazines)  was  published  before 
Christmas  1863,  Mr.  Kingsley,  in  a  review  of  Froude's 
History  of  England,  had  written,  "Truth  for  its  own 
sake  had  never  been  a  virtue  with  the  Roman  clergy. 
Father  Newman  informs  us  that  it  need  not  be,  and  on 
the  whole  ought  not  to  be ;  that  cunning  is  the  weapon 
which  Heaven  has  given  to  the  saints  wherewith  to 
withstand  the  brute  male  force  of  the  wicked  world 
which  marries  and  is  given  in  marriage.  Whether  his 
notion  be  doctrinally  correct  or  not,  it  is  at  least 
historically  so."  The  reference,  as  Mr.  Kingsley  after- 
wards stated,  was  to  Newman's  sermon  on  "  Wisdom 
and  Innocence,"  sermon  20  in  the  Oxford  volume  on 
Subjects  of  the  Day,  which  was  preached  on  Febru-ary 
19th,   1843,  of  which  the   text  would   certainly  have 


NEWMAN  AS  KOMAN  CATHOLIC.  227 

been,  as  I  remarked  at  the  time  of  the  discussion  about 
Kingsley's  dictum,  far  more  paradoxically  open  to  that 
imputation  than  any  interpretation  of  it  given  by  Dr. 
Newman — "  Behold,  I  send  you  forth  as  sheep  in  the 
midst  of  >Yolves ;  be  ye  therefore  wise  as  serpents,  and 
harmless  as  doves." 

Newman  of  course  noticed  that  amongst  the  lower 
races  of  animals  to  which  our  Lord  alluded  in  this 
precept,  "  the  weak "  are  compensated  for  their  weak- 
ness by  fleetness,  or  by  the  difficulty  of  discriminating 
them  from  the  localities  to  which  they  resort,  or  by 
**'  some  natural  cunning."  "  Brute  force  is  countervailed 
by  flight,  brute  passion  by  prudence  and  artifice."  But 
this  was  said  exclusively  of  the  instincts  of  the  weaker 
animals.  Of  men  he  expressly  said  that  all  sinful 
means  of  defence  are  forbidden  to  the  weak,  and  many 
are  forbidden  which  would  not  have  been  sinful  had 
they  not  been  forbidden.  He  admitted  that  Christians 
had  been  tempted  "  to  the  abuse  instead  of  the  use  of 
Christian  wisdom,  to  be  wise  without  being  harmless," 
and  this  he  condemned.  On  the  other  hand,  Christians 
in  times  of  persecution  are  perfectly  right  in  observing 
prudence  and  reticence.  "  Other  men  make  a  great 
clamour  and  lamentation  over  their  idols ;  there  is  no 
mistaking  that  they  have  lost  them,  and  that  they  have 
no  hope.  But  Christians  resign  themselves.  They 
are  silent;  silence  itself  is  suspicious — even  silence  is 
mystery.  Why  do  they  not  speak  out  ?  Why  do  they 
not  show  a  natural,  an  honest  indignation  ?  The  sub- 
mitting to  calumny  is  a  proof  that  it  is  too  true. 
They  would  set  themselves  right  if  they  could."  ^ 

1  Sermons  on  Subjects  of  the  Day,  p.  302.     Rivingtons,  1869. 


228  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

Mr.  Kingsley,  who  of  all  things  loved  the  frank  ex- 
pression of  indignation,  was  scandalized  at  this  apology 
for  self-restraint  under  misrepresentation, — though  our 
Lord  commanded  it, — and  he  treated  it  as  an  avowal 
of  Newman's  adhesion  to  the  doctrine  that  truth  is  no 
virtue.  Of  course  it  was  nothing  of  the  kind,  and 
when  challenged  to  produce  his  proof  that  Newman 
had  ever  said  anything  of  the  kind,  he  made  no  attempt 
to  support  his  accusation.  He  only  said  that  he  was 
very  glad  to  know  that  Newman  had  not  meant  what 
he  seemed  to  mean,  and  that  he  withdrew  the  imput- 
ations. To  this  Dr.  Newman  replied  by  publishing  the 
correspondence,  with  the  following  extremely  witty 
summary  of  its  drift. 

"  Mr.  Kingsley  begins  then  by  exclaiming,  *  Oh,  the 
chicanery,  the  wholesale  fraud,  the  vile  hypocrisy,  the 
conscience-killing  tyranny  of  Rome  !  We  have  not  far 
to  seek  for  an  evidence  of  it !  There's  Father  Newman 
to  wit :  one  living  specimen  is  worth  a  hundred  dead 
ones.  He  a  Priest,  writing  of  Priests,  tells  us  that 
lying  is  never  any  harm.'  I  interpose,  'You  are  taking 
a  most  extraordinary  liberty  with  my  name.  If  I  have 
said  this,  tell  me  when  and  where.'  Mr.  Kingsley 
replies,  '  You  said  it,  Reverend  Sir,  in  a  sermon  which 
you  preached  when  a  Protestant  as  vicar  of  St.  Mary's, 
and  published  in  1844,  and  I  could  read  you  a  very 
salutary  lecture  on  the  effects  which  that  Sermon  had 
at  the  time  on  my  own  opinion  of  you.'  I  make 
answer,  '  Oh  .  .  .  Not,  it  seems,  as  a  priest  speaking  of 
priests;  but  let  us  have  the  passage.'  Mr.  Kingsley 
relaxes : — *  Do  you  know  I  like  your  tone.  From  your 
tone,  I  rejoice,  greatly  rejoice,  to  be  able  to  believe  that 
you  did  not  mean  what  you  said.'     I  rejoin,  *  Mean  it  1 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  229 

I  maintain  I  never  said  it,  whether  as  a  Protestant  or 
as  a  Catholic/  Mr.  Kingsley  replies,  'I  waive  that 
point.'  I  object : — '  Is  it  possible  ?  What  ?  Waive  the 
main  question  ?  I  either  said  it  or  I  didn't.  You  have 
made  a  monstrous  charge  against  me — direct,  distinct, 
public;  you  are  bound  to  prove  it  as  directly,  as 
distinctly,  as  publicly ;  or  to  own  you  can't ! '  *  Well,' 
says  Mr.  Kingsley,  *  if  you  are  quite  sure  you  did  not 
say  it,  I'll  take  your  word  for  it,  I  really  will.'  My 
%vord  !  I  am  dumb.  Somehow  I  thought  that  it  was 
my  loord  that  happened  to  be  on  trial.  The  word  of  a 
Professor  of  lying  that  he  does  not  lie !  But  Mr. 
Kingsley  reassures  me.  '  We  are  both  gentlemen,'  he 
says ;  '  I  have  done  as  much  as  one  English  gentleman 
can  expect  from  another.'  I  begin  to  see :  he  thought 
me  a  gentleman  at  the  very  time  that  he  said  I  taught 
lying  on  system.  After  all  it  is  not  I  but  it  is  Mr. 
Kingsley  who  did  not  mean  what  he  said.  Hdbemus 
confltentem  reitm.  So  we  have  confessedly  come  round 
to  this,  preaching  without  practising;  the  common 
theme  of  satirists  from  Juvenal  to  Walter  Scott.  *  I 
left  Baby  Charles,  and  Steenie  laying  his  duty  before 
him,'  says  King  James  of  the  reprobate  Dalgarno ;  '  0 
Geordie,  jingling  Geordie,  it  was  grand  to  hear  Baby 
Charles  laying  down  the  guilt  of  dissimulation,  and 
Steenie  lecturing  on  the  turpitude  of  incontinence.' " 

This  summary  naturally  nettled  Mr.  Kingsley,  and 
he  replied  in  a  pamphlet  called  What  then  docs  Dr. 
Neivmaii  onean?  raking  up  all  the  evidence  he  could 
find  that  Newman  justified,  what  he  has  certainly  often 
justified,  the  guarded  and  careful  mode  of  doing  what 
Mr.  Kingsley  might  certainly  have  done  in  a  care- 
less, headlong,  and  inpetuous  manner,  and  closing  his 


230  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

pamphlet  with  very  bitter  remarks  on  Newman's  want 
of  straightforwardness,  which  virtually  amounted  to  an 
indictment  against  the  honesty  of  his  whole  career. 
This  was  the  attack  to  which  Newman's  Apologia  pro 
vitd  sud,  was  the  reply — a  book  which,  I  venture  to 
say,  has  done  more  to  break  down  the  English  distrust 
of  Roman  Catholics,  and  to  bring  about  a  hearty  good 
fellowship  between  them  and  the  members  of  other 
Churches,  than  all  the  rest  of  the  religious  literature  of 
our  time  put  together. 

I  have  already  made  very  large  use  of  this  singularly 
frank  and  straightforward  story  of  the  growth  of  New- 
man's convictions,  on  which  indeed  every  student  of  his 
life  must  be  dependent  for  his  knowledge  of  their 
development.  And  I  do  not  know  that  the  book 
requires  any  further  notice  here,  except  in  relation  to 
that  charge  against  him  of  sympathy  with  indirectness 
and  tortuousness  of  mind  out  of  which  it  sprang.  As 
for  tortuousness  of  mind,  the  charge  would  now  be 
admitted  by  all  fair  judges,  to  whatever  communion 
they  might  happen  to  belong,  to  be  utterly  mistaken, 
as  deplorably  mistaken  as  it  is  well  possible  for  a 
charge  to  be.  In  an  appendix  to  the  Apologia,  Dr. 
Newman  comments  on  one  of  Mr.  Kingsley's  sentences, 
in  which  he  said,  "Dr.  Newman  takes  a  seeming 
pleasure  in  detailing  instances  of  dishonesty  on  the 
part  of  Catholics,"  to  which  Newman  replies,  "Any 
one  who  knows  me  well  will  testify  that  my  '  seeming 
pleasure,'  as  he  calls  it,  at  such  things,  is  just  the  im- 
patient sensitiveness  which  relieves  itself  by  a  definite 
delineation  of  what  is  so  hateful  to  it." 

The  number  of  those  persons  who  "  know  Dr.  New- 
man well"  must  have   been  vastly  increased   by  the 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  231 

publication  of  the  Apologia,  or  the  History  of  my  Re- 
ligious Opinions,  aa  it  was  called  in  the  later  editions ; 
and  every  one  of  them,  I  suppose,  would  heartily  concur 
in  this  observation  of  the  autobiographer.  He  is  the 
last  man  in  the  world  to  feel  the  smallest  sympathy 
with  untruthfulness  or  dishonesty,  indeed  not  to  feel 
the  utmost  repulsion  towards  it.  A  man  so  genuine 
in  character,  so  ingenuous  in  judging  himself,  has  hardly 
ever  made  himself  known  to  the  world.  But  though 
Mr.  Kingsley  never  made  a  greater  mistake  than  when 
he  discerned  any  tortuousness  of  mind  in  Dr.  Newman, 
his  excuse  was  that  Newman's  conception  of  the  right 
mode  of  getting  at  truth  in  religious  matters,  was  un- 
doubtedly what  almost  all  Protestants,  and  assuredly  all 
Protestants  of  Mr.  Kingsley's  rather  impatient  tempera- 
ment, would  have  called  eminently  complex  and  in- 
direct. As  we  have  seen,  Newman  has  never  found 
any  simple  or  easily-applied  test  of  truth.  He  thinks 
it  much  easier  to  believe  anything  he  "  ought "  to 
believe,  than  to  find  out  what  truth  is  without  reference 
to  any  command  or  injunction  to  which  he  feels  it  his 
duty  to  submit. 

His  first  practical  conception  of  what  he  "  ought "  to 
believe  was  anything  inculcated  by  Scripture ;  his  next 
was  anything  inculcated  by  the  catena  of  Anglican 
divines,  in  whom  he  supposed  that  he  had  found  the 
living  voice  of  the  Anglican  Church.  His  last  and 
present  test  of  what  he  ought  to  believe,  is  what  the 
voice  of  the  Koman  Catholic  Church  imposes  on  him ; 
and  it  is  obvious  enough  that  none  of  these  tests,  unless 
it  be  the  last,  is  very  distinct  in  outline,  nor  any  of 
them  one  that  admits  of  off-hand  practical  application. 
Newman    has   never   had    a    supreme   confidence    in 


> 


232  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

"common-sense,"  or  "instinct,"  or  "intuition,"  or  any- 
other  short-cut  to  religious  truth.  To  him  rehgious 
truth  has  been  a  highly  complex  problem  from  the  first, 
not  one  to  be  easily  solved,  but  one  that,  take  what  test 
of  it  he  will,  requires  the  greatest  care  in  statement  and 
the  utmost  precaution  in  the  method  of  its  application. 
Of  his  mind,  if  of  any,  it  has  been  true,  as  I  said  early 
in  this  little  book,  that — 

"The  intellectual  power  through  words  and  things, 
Went  sounding  on  a  dim  and  perilous  way." 

He  has  always  been  disposed  to  regard  the  material 
world  as  a  mere  hieroglyphic  expression  of  deeper 
spiritual  meanings.  Even  in  dealing  with  Scripture, 
he  has  from  a  very  early  period  inclined  to  mingle  the 
mystical  with  the  more  obvious  interpretation  of  the  text. 
And  even  in  accepting  the  guidance  of  a  Church,  he  has 
ever  been  on  his  guard  against  any  hasty  and  inadequate 
collation  of  its  authoritative  definitions.  Hence  he  has 
vexed  all  impatient  and  eager  minds,  who  cut  their  way 
to  what  they  deem  truth  by  rough  and  ready  processes, 
and  has  laid  himself  open  to  the  imputation  of  indirect- 
ness. There  is  a  striking  instance  of  this  in  the  cele- 
brated passage  in  the  Apologia  in  which  he  contrasts 
the  intimate,  irresistible,  indissoluble  connection  between 
belief  in  self  and  belief  in  God,  with  the  mystery  of  the 
world  as  it  actually  presents .  itself  to  us  in  all  its 
godlessness.  "The  tokens,",  he  writes,  "so  faint  and 
broken,  of  a  superintending  design,  the  blind  evolution 
of  what  turn  out  to  be  great  powers  or  truths,  the 
progress  of  things  as  if  from  unreasoning  elements,  not 
towards  final  causes,  the  greatness  and  littleness  of  man, 
his  far-reaching  aims,  his  short  duration,  the  curtain 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  233 

hung  over  his  futurity,  the  disappointments  of  life,  the 
defeat  of  good,  the  success  of  evil,  physical  pain,  mental 
anguish,  the  prevalence  and  intensity  of  sin,  the  per- 
vading idolatries,  the  corruptions,  the  dreary,  hopeless 
irreligion,  that  condition  of  the  whole  race  so  fearfully 
yet  exactly  described  in  the  Apostle's  words,  '  having  no 
hope,  and  without  God  in  the  world,' — all  this  is  a  vision 
to  dizzy  and  appal;  and  inflicts  upon  the  mind  the 
sense  of  a  profound  mystery,  which  is  absolutely  beyond 
human  solution."  ^  It  was  obvious  that  a  mind  which 
could  grasp  with  such  power  the  paradox  of  human 
life  in  its  relation  to  Divine  revelation,  could  not  by  any 
means  have  presented  itself  to  a  vivid  and  passionate 
imagination  like  Mr.  Kingsley's  as  one  which  he  would 
have  called  natural  and  straightforward ;  and  yet  its 
naturalness  is  naturalness  of  a  very  high  order,  and  its 
straightforwardness  as  straightforward  as  any  nature  so 
wide  and  sensitive  to  all  sorts  of  delicate  attractions 
and  repulsions  could  possibly  be.  The  simplicity  of 
minds  such  as  Newman's,  profound  as  it  is,  will  seem 
anything  but  simplicity,  will  seem  complexity,  to  other 
men,  while  the  anxious  forecast  of  it  will  seem  artificial. 

"  So  dark  a  foretlionght  rolled  about  his  brain, 
As  on  a  dull  day  in  an  Ocean  cave, 
The  blind  wave  feeling  round  his  long  sea-hall 
In  silence."  2 

And  yet  this  "  dark  forethought "  is  in  Newman's  case 
completely  overruled  and  subdued  by  faith  and  love,     y 


I  feel  no  doubt  that  the  preparation  of  the  Ai^ 
and  the  attempt  to  bring  out  the  course  of  his  own 

1  Apologia,  pp.  377-8. 

2  Idylls  of  the  King,  p.  384  of  Macmillan's  one  volume  edition. 


234  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

thought  in  the  long  series  of  changes  which  at  length 
made  him  a  Roman  Catholic,  set  Newman  thinking 
afresh  on  the  general  principles  of  belief,  and  led  to 
his  attempt  to  give  some  general  account  of  those 
principles  in  the  book  published  in  1870,  which  he 
modestly  termed  A  Grammar  of  Assent.  I  don't  think 
the  title  was  a  very  happy  one.  Whatever  the  book 
is,  it  is  not  a  Grammar  of  any  kind.  Instead  of  dealing 
with  the  rationale  of  language,  and  the  distinctive 
character  of  the  different  parts  of  speech,  its  chief 
epdeavour  is  to  show  how  much  there  is  in  the  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  assent  yielded  by  the  mind  to  propos- 
itions, which  cannot  be  reflected  in  language  at  all, 
and  to  justify  in  general  the  feeling  of  certitude,  even 
while  expressly  admitting  and  contending  that  that 
feeling  of  certitude  is  often  wrongly  entertained,  and 
misleading  to  those  who  so  entertain  it. 

This  is  not  the  place  either  to  analyze  or  criticize  an 
elaborate  and  in  some  respects  a  technical  essay  of  this 
kind,  but  I  refer  to  it  for  the  sake  of  the  light  it  throws 
upon  the  processes  of  Newman's  own  mind.  I  take  it 
that  the  general  drift  of  the  book  is  to  impress  on  those 
who  read  it,  that  unless  the  constitution  of  the  human 
mind  may  be  assumed  to  be  on  the  whole  truthful  and 
trustworthy,  all  attempts  to  mend  it  are  simply  childish. 
"  If  I  may  not  assume,"  he  says,  "  that  I  exist,  and  in 
a  particular  way,  that  is,  with  a  particular  mental 
constitution,  I  have  nothing  to  speculate  about,  and 
had  better  let  speculation  alone.  Such  as  I  am,  it  is 
my  all;  this  is  my  essential  standpoint,  and  must  be 
taken  for  granted;  otherwise  thought  is  but  an  idle 
amusement  not  worth  the  trouble.  There  is  no 
medium  between  using  my  faculties,  as  I  have  them, 


NEWMAN   AS   KOMAN   CATHOLIC.  235 

and  flinging  myself  upon  the  external  world  according 
to  the  random  impulse  of  the  moment,  as  spray  upoji 
the  surface  of  the  waves,  and  simply  forgetting  that 
I  am."^ 

As  regards  belief,  Newman  shows  that  man  is  a  believ- 
ing animal,  that  he  gives  credit  very  easily,  and  often 
of  course  with  very  unfortunate  results,  to  what  he  is 
told ;  but  that  none  the  less  this  credulousness,  guarded 
as  it  usually  is  in  its  earlier  stages  by  the  surroundings 
of  domestic  life,  is  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  in- 
estimable of  the  preparations  and  disciplines  for  life. 
"Of  the  two,"  he  writes,  "I  would  rather  have  to 
maintain  that  we  ought  to  begin  by  believing  every- 
thing that  is  offered  to  our  acceptance,  than  that  it 
is  our  duty  to  doubt  of  everything.  This  indeed  seems 
the  true  way  of  learning.  In  that  case  we  soon  dis- 
cover and  discard  what  is  contradictory;  and  error 
having  always  some  portion  of  truth  in  it,  and  the  truth 
having  a  reality  which  error  has  not,  we  may  expect 
that  when  there  is  an  honest  purpose  and  fair  talents, 
we  shall  somehow  make  our  way  forward,  the  error 
falling  off  from  the  mind,  and  the  truth  developing  and 
occupying  it."  ^  Now  as  Newman  finds  that,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  men  are  very  often  certain,  and  are  often  rightly 
certain,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  have  not  unfre- 
quently  been  wrongly  certain,  he  concludes  that  certitude 
is  a  reasonable  attitude  for  human  nature,  and  that 
though  sceptics  may  try  to  undermine  the  feeling  of 
certitude,  they  will  not  succeed.  We  may  do  something 
in  guarding  the  mind  against  precipitate  and  false 
certitude,  but  we  shall  not  root  out  the  confidence  that 

1  An  Essay  towards  a  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  340.  Burns,  Gates, 
&  Co.,  1870.  2  Hid,  p.  371-2. 


236  CAKDINAL  NEWMAN. 

on  a  great  number  of  subjects  certitude  can  and  ought 
to  be  attained. 

"  Suppose,"  he  says,  "  I  am  walking  out  in  the  moon- 
light, and  see  dimly  the  outlines  of  some  figure  among 
the  trees; — it  is  a  man.  I  draw  nearer — it  is  still  a 
man  ;  nearer  still,  and  all  hesitation  is  at  an  end — I  am 
certain  it  is  a  man.  But  he  neither  moves  nor  speaks 
when  I  address  him ;  and  then  I  ask  myself  what  can  be 
his  purpose  in  hiding  among  the  trees  at  such  an  hour  ? 
I  come  quite  close  to  him  and  put  out  my  arm.  Then 
I  find  for  certain  that  what  I  took  for  a  man  is  but  a 
singular  shadow  formed  by  the  falling  of  the  moonlight 
on  the  interstices  of  some  branches  or  their  foliage. 
Am  I  not  to  indulge  my  second  certitude  because  I  was 
wrong  in  my  first  ?  Does  not  any  objection  which  lies 
against  my  second,  from  the  failure  of  my  first,  fade 
away  before  the  evidence  on  which  my  second  is 
founded  ?  "  ^  Whence  Newman  concludes,  that  though 
we  are  often  certain  when  we  ought  not  to  be,  there 
is  plenty  of  room  for  true  certitude  in  human  life,  and 
that  there  is  room  for  it  even  in  the  case  of  arguments 
which,  so  far  as  you  can  make  out,  appear  to  afford 
nothing  but  a  great  cumulation  of  probabilities,  from 
which,  speaking  mathematically,  it  would  be  impossible 
to  attain  mathematical  certainty. 

For  instance,  to  a  man  who  has  never  been  in  India,  it 
is  but  an  accumulation  of  testimonies,  which  may  all  be 
unveracious  testimonies,  that  such  a  place  as  Calcutta 
exists.  Yet  we  are  all  quite  certain  that  it  does  exist, 
and  justly  certain  of  it.  Hence,  according  to  Newman, 
there  is  a  margin  of  conviction  over  and  above  any 

1  An  Essay  toioards  a  Grammar  of  Assent,  pp.  223-4. 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  237 

inferential  proof  we  can  give  for  it  in  logical  form,  in 
most  of  our  legitimate  certitudes.     And  the  latter  part 
of  his  book  is  occupied  in  illustrating  what  he  calls  the 
"  illative  sense,"  in  other  words,  the  power  of  inferring 
truth  from  converging  lines  of  evidence,  none  of  which 
separately  would  justify  certitude,  but  all  of  which,  taken 
together,  do  justify  it,  in  connection  with  Christian  belief. 
Newman  illustrates  the  action  of  what  he  calls  "the 
illative  sense  "  from  the  mathematical  theory  of  limits. 
We  know,  he  says,  that  the  greater  the  number  of  the 
sides  of  a  polygon  inscribed  in  a  circle,  and  the  smaller 
each    individual  side,  the  nearer  it  approaches  to  the 
circle  itself.     Yet  as  we  can  never  actually  deal  with  a 
polygon  of  an  infinite  number  of  infinitesimal  sides,  we 
have  no  experience  of  the  truth  that  such  a  polygon 
coincides  with  the  circle.     Yet  mathematicians  do  not 
hesitate   to   accept   as   demonstrably   true,   that   what 
steadily  approximates  to  truth  as  the  limit  is  approached, 
is   actually  true,   though   we   cannot   verify  its   truth, 
when   the    limit    is   actually   reached.      So   it    is,   in 
Newman's  opinion,  with  the  inference  to  be  drawn  from 
a  number  of  convergent  lines  of  reasoning.     Apparently  • 
they  only  accumulate  probabilities,  and  no  mere  accumu- 
lation of  probabilites  can  amount  to  certainty;   yet  if 
a  number  of  different   evidences   approach   the   same 
conclusion  from  quite  different  sides  of  human  nature, 
there  is  something  in  the  mind  which  insists  on  supple- 
menting the  formal  deficiency  in  this  accumulation  of 
probabilities,  and  on  concluding,  so  as  to  inspire  certi- 
tude, where  from  the  logical  point  of  view  there  would 
seem  only  to  be  room  for  a  strong  presumption.   Assent, 
according  to  Newman,  is  an  act  of  the  living  mind  that 
often  passes  beyond  the  formal  grounds  on  which,  so  far 


238  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

as  analysis  goes,  we  can  alone  consciously  justify  it.  It 
often  concludes  peremptorily  and  even  effectually  on 
grounds  which,  so  far  as  we  can  draw  out  explicitly 
the  reasons  for  our  conclusion,  would  furnish  us  only 
with  a  halting  and  inadequate  argument,  just  as  the 
living  hand  and  foot  will  achieve  a  difficult  feat  in 
climbing,  of  which  it  would  have  been  impossible 
beforehand  to  give  the  rationale. 

It  will  be  seen  by  what  I  have  said,  that  Newman's 
course  of  thought  since  he  had  first  joined  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  had,  after  a  short  interval  of  something 
like  passionate  ardour,  marked  chiefly  by  the  Sermons 
addressed  to  Mixed  Congregations  and  Callista,  reverted 
to  its  older  temper,  the  temper  which  discouraged  any- 
thing like  impulsive  action,  and  which  placed  large  faith 
in  time  and  the  gradual  effect  produced  by  the  implicit 
action  of  honest  and  anxious  reflection  on  an  observant 
and  vigilant  mind.  The  Grammar  of  Assent,  which  is  a 
long  plea  for  cautious  and  deliberate  though  courageous 
reasoning  on  all  the  various  converging  lines  of  consider- 
ation which  bear  on  the  Christian  revelation,  was  pub- 
lished in  1870,  amidst  the  excitements  of  the  Vatican 
Council.  It  was  only  natural  that  Newman,  whose 
heart  was  more  or  less  identified  with  his  Anglican 
friends,  and  with  those  who  had  followed  in  the  wake 
of  his  Anglican  friends,  should  have  been  profoundly 
anxious  lest  anything  done  in  that  Council  should 
retard  the  movement  towards  Rome,  and  drive  back 
men  with  whose  general  tendencies  of  thought  he  was 
in  sympathy,  towards  Protestantism  or  a  state  of  help- 
less vacillation.  I  have  no  doubt  that  his  own  mind 
had  long  accepted  something  like  the  doctrine  which 
was  defined  at  that  Council  as  to  the  centre  of  the 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN   CATHOLIC.  239 

Church's  infallibility;  but  he  did  not  think  that  the 
time  was  ripe  for  so  great  a  step  forwards  in  the  way 
of  transforming  implicit  into  explicit  doctrine,  and  he 
knew  that  in  many  cases  it  would  repel  hesitating 
Anglicans,  and  throw  them  back  on  what  he  called 
"Religious  Liberalism,"  in  other  words,  the  doubt 
whether  there  was  any  final  guidance  to  be  had  in 
theology  at  all.  He  was  therefore  amongst  the  most 
earnest  of  those  who  were  called  the  "  inopportunists,'* 
and  great  was  his  indignation  at  the  action  of  Mr.  Ward 
and  the  Dublin  Review  in  urging  on  the  Ultramontanes, 
and  indeed  in  presenting  the  doctrine  of  the  infallibility 
of  the  Pope,  in  a  form  far  more  extravagant  than  that 
which  it  ultimately  took, 

A  private  letter  to  his  Bishop,  in  which  he  called  these 
Eno^lish  Yaticanists  "an  aoforressive,  insolent  faction," 
was  by  some  breach  of  faith  allowed  to  creep  into  print, 
and  for  a  time  the  quarrel  between  the  Yaticanists  and 
the  Inopportunists  in  England  was  extremely  hot.  Dr. 
Newman  held  that  Rome  should  speak  only  when  some 
great  heresy  or  other  evil  impended,  and  should  speak  to 
inspire  hope  and  confidence  in  the  faithful.  "  But  now," 
he  wrote  to  Bishop  Ullathorne,  "  we  have  the  greatest 
meeting  which  ever  has  been  seen,  and  that  at  Rome, 
infusing  into  us,  by  the  accredited  organs  of  Rome  and 
of  its  partisans  (such  as  the  Civilta,  the  Armonia,  the 
Urnvers,  and  the  TaUet),  little  else  than  fear  and  dismay. 
When  we  are  all  at  rest  and  have  no  doubts,  and — at 
least  practically,  not  to  say  doctrinally — hold  the  Holy 
Father  to  be  infallible,  suddenly  there  is  thunder  in  the 
clear  sky,  and  we  are  told  to  prepare  for  something,  we 
know  not  what,  to  try  our  faith,  we  know  not  how. 
No   impending  danger  is  to  be  averted,  but   a  great 


240  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

difficulty  is  to  be  created.  Is  this  the  proper  work  of 
an  (Ecumenical  Council?  As  to  myself  personally, 
please  God,  I  do  not  expect  any  trial  at  all ;  but  I  cannot 
help  suffering  with  the  many  souls  who  are  suffering, 
and  I  look  with  anxiety  at  the  prospect  of  having  to 
defend  decisions  which  may  not  be  difficult  to  my  own 
private  judgment,  but  may  be  most  difficult  to  main- 
tain logically  in  the  face  of  historical  facts.  What  have 
we  done  to  be  treated  as  the  faithful  never  were  treated 
before  ?  When  has  a  definition  de  fide  been  a  luxury 
of  devotion,  and  not  a  stern,  painful  necessity  ?  Why 
should  an  aggressive,  insolent  faction  be  allowed  *  to 
make  the  heart  of  the  just  sad  whom  the  Lord  hath 
not  made  sorrowful'?  Why  cannot  we  be  let  alone, 
when  we  have  pursued  peace  and  thought  no  evil  ? " 

Dr.  Newman  went  on  to  expatiate  on  "  the  blight 
which  is  falling  on  the  multitude  of  Anglican  ritualists," 
who  were  diffusing  Church  principles  far  and  wide  among 
Protestants,  and  concluded  by  saying,  "If  it  is  God's 
will  that  the  Pope's  infallibility  is  defined,  then  is  it 
God's  will  to  throw  back  the  times  and  moments  of 
that  triumph  which  He  has  destined  for  His  Kingdom, 
and  I  shall  feel  I  have  but  to  bow  my  head  to  His 
adorable,  inscrutable  Providence."  Oddly  enough,  con- 
sidering that  he  protested  thus  passionately  against  the 
opportuneness  of  the  decree,  it  was  Dr.  Newman  who 
was  fixed  upon  a  few  years  later  by  the  general  desire 
of  the  English  Catholics  to  answer  Mr.  Gladstone's 
criticisms  on  Vaticanism,  in  that  ''  Letter  to  the  Duke 
of  Norfolk  "  in  which  he  insisted  that  there  was  plenty 
of  freedom  left  to  Catholics,  after  the  Vatican  decree, 
and  that  that  decree  in  no  serious  way  imperilled  the 
loyalty  of  English  Catholics  to  the  sovereign  and  laws 


^ 


NEWMAN  AS  ROMAN  CATHOLIC.  241 

of  England.  But  the  controversy  concerning  the  Vatican 
decree  throws  little  light  on  the  history  of  Dr.  Newman's 
own  thought,  and  I  shall  leave  it  with  the  remark  that 
I  do  not  quite  understand  his  question,  "  Where  has  a 
definition  de  fide  been  a  luxury  of  devotion  and  not  a 
stern,  painful  necessity  ? "  Surely  the  decree  on  the 
Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Virgin  Mary  was  precisely 
"  a  luxury  of  devotion,"  and  not  "  a  stern,  painful  ne- 
cessity." Was  any  great  and  dangerous  heresy  repressed 
by  that  decree  ? 

The  time  came,  however,  when  Newman's  "  minim- 
izing "  view  of  the  Vatican  definition  was  once  more 
in  the  ascendant  at  Rome.  Pius  IX.  died  in  1878,  and 
was  succeeded  by  Leo  XIII.,  who  is  at  least  as  much 
a  statesman  as  a  theologian.  It  soon  became  evident 
that  his  policy  would  be  to  reconcile  the  European  States 
with  the  Vatican,  except  where  they  were  deliberately 
bent  upon  a  policy  of  aggression  and  persecution,  and 
of  course  his  attention  was  at  once  turned  to  the  more 
eminent  men  in  the  different  Catholic  communities 
who,  while  faithful  to  the  Church,  had  yet  regarded 
his  predecessor's  policy  as  premature  and  unfavourable 
for  the  spread  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith.  Early  in 
1879  it  was  known  that  he  wished  especially  to  do 
honour  to  his  pontificate  by  numbering  Newman  among 
the  Cardinals,  and  Newman,  who  fully  understood  that 
by  declining  that  distinction  he  should  hurt  the  feelings 
of  all  the  moderates  who  had  supported  him  nine  years 
previously,  when  he  was  "in  disgrace  with  fortune" 
and  Ultramontanes'  eyes,  signified  his  assent.  On  the 
sixteenth  of  April  he  left  Birmingham  for  Rome,  ar- 
riving there  on  the  twenty-fourth,  and  on  the  twelfth 
of  May,  1879,  he  received  the  Cardinal's  hat.     In  his 


242  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

manner  of  expressing  his  thanks  for  the  honour  con- 
ferred on  him,  the  new  Cardinal  reminded  all  those  who 
read  his  speech  of  the  naturalness,  simplicity,  and  grace 
of  his  old  Oxford  days.  "  In  a  long  course  of  years," 
he  said,  "  I  have  made  many  mistakes.  I  have  nothing 
of  that  high  perfection  which  belongs  to  the  writings 
of  the  Saints, — namely,  that  error  could  not  be  found  in 
them ;  but  what  I  trust  I  may  claim  throughout  all  I 
have  written  is  this — an  honest  intention,  an  absence 
of  private  ends,  a  temper  of  obedience,  a  willingness  to 
be  corrected,  a  dread  of  error,  a  desire  to  serve  the  Holy 
Church,  and,  through  Divine  mercy,  a  fair  share  of 
success."  He  went' on  to  claim  that  ever  since  he 
began  to  take  a  part  in  ecclesiastical  life  at  all,  he  had 
opposed  what  he  called  "  Liberalism  in  Religion,"  which 
he  defined  as  "the  doctrine  that  there  is  no  positive 
truth  in  religion,  but  that  one  creed  is  as  good  as 
another."  It  is  of  course  perfectly  true  that  from 
the  very  beginning  of  his  career  Newman  has  been 
a  steady  advocate  of  what  is  called  dogmatic  Chris- 
tianity, that  is,  Christianity  which  is  not  a  formless  and 
gelatinous  mass  of  vague  sentiment,  but  which  springs 
from  a  deeply-planted  seed  of  revealed  doctrine,  and 
has  been,  in  his  opinion,  developed  organically  and  pro- 
videntially from  that  original  germ.  But  is  "  Liberalism 
in  Religion  "  a  happy  description  of  the  anti-dogmatic 
attitude  of  mind  ?  I  should  have  thought  not.  Liberalism 
is  probably  oftener  used  to  signify  the  disposition  to 
make  concessions  to  popular  demands  than  in  any 
other  sense,  and  it  is  by  no  means  clear  that  the  popular 
mind  does  demand  the  relaxation  of  dogmatic  restraints 
on  the  Babel-like  confusion  of  religious  opinions.  In 
one  sense  Newman  has  been  a  steady  foe  of  dogmatic 


NEWMAN  AS  EOMAN  CATHOLIC.  243 

tyranny ;  virtually  he  received  his  Cardinal's  hat  be- 
cause he  had  contended  so  boldly  against  any  attempt 
to  invade  freedom  of  conscience  in  the  Church.  His 
doctrine  has  always  been  that  private  conscientiousness 
is  the  first  step  towards  orthodoxy,  and  that  any  attempt 
to  interfere  with  true  liberty  of  conscience,  or  even  to 
spur  and  hurry  on  its  natural  pace  by  external  pressure, 
is  in  the  highest  degree  dangerous  to  the  cause  of  true 
belief.  If  Newman  had  never  been  a  Liberal  in  the 
sense  of  making  a  strong  fight  for  those  whose  slow 
conscientious  advance  was  threatened  by  the  despotism 
of  impatient  and  jealous  authority,  I  do  not  suppose 
he  would  ever  have  been  a  Cardinal.  In  1870  we 
witnessed  the  spectacle  of  "  Blind  Authority  beating 
with  his  staff  the  child  that  might  have  led  him."  In 
1879  Authority,  with  his  eyes  couched,  raised  him  who 
had  thus  been  singled  out  for  the  display  of  ecclesi- 
astical displeasure,  to  the  position  of  one  of  the  Princes 
of  the  Church. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

kewman's  chief  poem,  and  the  unity  of  his  life. 

I  HAVE  but  little  left  to  say  of  Cardinal  Newman, 
and  that  little  will  be  best  said  in  connection  with  his 
most  remarkable  poem,  The  Dream  of  Gerontms.  Before 
the  Vatican  disputes,  and  shortly  after  the  close  of  his 
controversy  with  Canon  Kingsley,  Newman  had  written 
a  poem  of  which  he  himself  thought  so  little,  that  it 
was,  as  I  have  heard,  consigned  or  doomed  to  the 
waste-paper  basket;  and  Mr.  Jennings,  in  his  very 
interesting  account  of  Cardinal  Newman,^  credits  the 
statement.  Some  friend  who  had  eyes  for  true  poetry 
rescued  it,  and  was  the  means  therefore  of  preserving  to 
the  world  one  of  the  most  unique  and  original  of  the 
poems  of  the  present  century,  as  well  as  that  one  of  all 
of  them  which  is  in  every  sense  the  least  in  sympathy 
with  the  temper  of  the  present  century,  indeed  the 
most  completely  independent  of  the  Zeitgeist. 

The  Dream  of  Gerontius  is  intended  to  delineate 
Newman's  conception  of  the  last  great  change  through 
which  a  faithful  Catholic  passes,  when  he  exchanges  this 

1  Cardinal  Newman^  the  Story  of  his  Life,  by  Henry  J.  Jennings. 
Birmingham :  Houghton  &  Company.  London :  Simpkin  & 
Marshall. 


NEWMAN'S   CHIEF   POEM.  245 

world  for  tlie  world  of  spirits.  But  it  is  not  merely  a 
poem  on  death,  for  it  manages  to  give  us  in  man}^  re- 
spects a  much  more  adequate  impression  of  the  true 
core  of  Newman's  faith  and  life  than  any  other  of  his 
works.  None  of  his  writings  engrave  more  vividly  on 
his  readers,  the  significance  of  the  intensely  practical 
convictions  which  have  shaped  his  career.  And  especially 
it  impresses  on  us  one  of  the  great  secrets  of  his  in- 
fluence. For  Newman  has  been  a  sign  to  this  generation, 
that  unless  there  is  a  great  deal  of  the  lonehness  of  death 
in  life,  there  can  hardly  be  much  of  the  higher  equanimity 
of  life  in  death.  To  my  mind,  The  Dream  of  Gcrontius  is 
the  poem  of  a  man  to  whom  the  vision  of  the  Christian 
revelation  has  at  all  times  been  more  real,  more  potent 
to  influence  action,  and  more  powerful  to  pre-occupy 
the  imagination,  than  all  worldly  interests  put  together 
— of  a  man  whose  whole  horizon  has  been  so  taken  up  by 
revealed  religion  that  his  career  embodies  a  statuesque 
unity  and  fixity  of  purpose,  standing  out  against  our 
confused  modern  world  of  highly  complex  and  oftea  ex- 
tremely petty  interests,  like  a  lighthouse  shining  against 
blurred  and  lowering  masses  of  town,  and  shore,  and 
harbour,  and  sea,  and  sky.  The  Dream  of  Germitms, 
though  an  imaginative  account  of  a  Catholic's  death, 
touches  all  the  beliefs  and  hopes  which  had  been  the 
mainstay  of  Newman's  life,  and  the  chief  subjects  of 
his  waking  thoughts  and  most  vivid  impressions.  It 
is  impossible  to  read  it  without  recognizing  especially 
that  Newman  had  always  and  steadily  conceived  life  as 
a  Divine  gift  held  absolutely  at  God's  will,  not  only  in 
regard  to  its  duration,  but  ako  in  regard  to  the  mode 
and  conditions  of  its  tenure\  Death,  even  to  the  most 
faithful,  brings  home  the  thinness  of  the  crust  which 


246  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

separates  the  personal  consciousness  from  the  utter 
coUapse  which  follows  the  withdrawal  of  God's  sustain- 
iijg  power.  And  death  even  to  the  most  faithful  is  the 
signal  for  convincing  them  of  their  utter  impotence,  and 
of  the  constant  guardianship  of  other  mightier  beings 
than  ourselves,  in  the  hollow  of  whose  hand  we  lie  as 
helpless  as  the  chrysalis  in  the  cocoou  of  silk.  It  opens 
with  a  delineation  of  that  "  strange  innermost  abandon- 
ment," that  "emptying  out  of  each  constituent  aud 
natural  force,"  which  dismays  the  soul  by  fully  realiziug 
to  it  for  the  first  time  its  utter  incapacity  even  to  clmg 
fast  to  that  which  it  supposed  to  be  of  its  very  essence — - 

"  'Tis  death — oh,  loving  friends,  your  prayers  ! — 'Tis  lie. 
As  though  my  very  being  had  given  way, 
As  though  I  were  no  more  a  substance  now, 
And  could  fall  back  on  nought  to  be  my  stay, 
(Help,  loving  Lord,  Thou  my  sole  reluge,  Thou), 
And  turn  nowhither  but  must  needs  decay 
And  drop  from  out  the  universal  frame 
Into  that  shapeless,  scopeless,  blank  abyss, 
That  utter  nothingness  of  which  I  came." 

Then  the  horror  of  this  collapse  abates  sufficiently  for 
Gerontius  to  make  his  last  confession  of  faith,  and  give 
up  his  will  with  hearty  fervour  to  God's;  and  then  it 
returns,  and  in  his  dream  he  dies — but  soon  awakes  to 
find  himself,  as  he  thiuks,  refreshed  by  a  strange  sleep, 
followed  by  "  an  inexpressive  lightness  and  a  sense  of 
freedom." 

"  I  had  a  dream.     Yes,  some  one  softly  said 
*  He's  gone,'  and  then  a  sigh  went  round  the  room  ; 
And  then  I  surely  heard  a  priestly  voice 
Cry  Subvenite;  and  they  knelt  in  prayer. 
I  seem  to  hear  him  still,  but  thin  and  low, 
And  fainter  and  more  faint  the  accents  come, 
As  at  an  ever-widening  interval. 


NEWMAN'S  CHIEF   POEM.  247 

All  !  whence  is  this  ?     What  is  this  severance? 

This  silence  pours  a  solitariness 

Into  the  very  essence  of  my  soul ; 

And  the  deep  rest,  so  soothing  and  so  sweet, 

Hath  something  too  of  sternness  and  of  pain. 

For  it  drives  back  my  thoughts  upon  their  spring 

By  a  strange  introversion,  and  perforce 

I  now  begin  to  feed  upon  myself, 

Because  I  have  nought  else  to  feed  upon. 

Am  I  alive  or  dead  ?     I  am  not  dead, 

But  in  the  body  still,  for  I  possess 

A  sort  of  confidence  which  clings  to  me, 

That  each  particular  organ  holds  its  place 

As  heretofore,  combining  with  the  rest 

Into  one  symmetry,  that  wraps  me  round 

And  makes  me  man  ;  and  surely  I  could  move 

Did  I  but  will  it,  every  part  of  me. 

And  yet  I  cannot  to  my  sense  bring  home 

By  very  trial,  that  I  have  the  power. 

'Tis  strange  ;  I  cannot  stir  a  hand  or  foot, 

I  cannot  make  my  fingers  or  my  lips 

By  mutual  pressure  witness  each  to  each, 

Nor  by  the  eyelid's  instantaneous  stroke 

Assure  myself  I  have  a  body  still. 

Nor  do  I  know  my  very  attitude, 

Nor  if  I  stand,  or  lie,  or  sit,  or  kneel. 

So  much  I  know,  not  knowing  how  I  know, 

That  the  vast  universe  where  I  have  dwelt 

Is  quitting  me,  or  I  am  quitting  it  ; 

Or  I,  or  it,  is  rushing  on  the  wings 

Of  light  or  lightning  on  an  onward  course, 

And  we  e'en  now  are  million  miles  apart. 

Yet  ...  is  this  peremptory  severance 

Wrought  out  in  lengthening  measurements  of  space, 

Which  grow  and  multiply  by  speed  and  time  1 

Or  am  I  traversing  infinity 

By  endless  sub-division,  hurrying  back 

From  finite  towards  infinitesimal, 

Thus  dying  out  of  the  expansive  world  1 " 


Surely  in  all  literature  there  has  been  no  more 
effective  effort  to  realize  the  separation  of  soul  and 
body,  and  the  thoughts  which  might  possess  a  soul 
separated   from   the   body,  than  this.      But  soon   the 


248  CARDINAL   NEWMAN. 

spiritual  sense  opens  out.  Gerontius  becomes  aware  of 
the  presence  of  his  guardian  angel,  in  the  hollow  of 
whose  hand  he  is  being  borne  to  judgment,  and  a 
conversation  ensues  in  which  he  is  told  that  in  the 
immaterial  world  intervals  are  no  longer  measured  by 
"the  swing  this  way  and  that  of  the  suspended  rod," 
but  only  by  the  intensity  of  the  living  thought.  "  It 
is  thy  very  energy  of  thought  which  keeps  thee  from 
tliy  God."  Then  Gerontius  becomes  aware  of  evil 
beings  who  are  hungering  after  him,  and  trying  to 
renew  in  him  the  old  spirit  of  rebellion,  and  he  is  told 
by  his  guardian  angel  that — 

"  It  is  the  restless  panting  of  their  being  ; 
Like  beasts  of  prey,  who,  caged  within  their  Lars, 
In  a  deep  hideous  purring  have  their  life, 
And  an  incessant  pacing  to  and  fro." 

I  know  no  more  powerful  conception  anywhere  of 
impotent  restiveness  and  restlessness.  Though  these 
assailants  are  now  impotent,  pain  is  still  before  the  soul 
of  Gerontius — the  pain  no  longer  of  temptation  and 
fear,  but  of  what  we  may  perhaps  call  the  fiery  and 
jjurifying  despair  of  love  at  finding  itself  so  unworthy 
of  God.  The  whole  scenery  of  redemption  is  brought, 
before  Gerontius  in  the  songs  of  the  angels,  through 
whose  hosts  he  is  borne,  till  at  last  he  hears  once  more 
the  prayers  of  those  kneeling  around  his  death-bed, 
which  are  borne  into  the  very  presence  of  God ;  and 
the  Angel  of  the  Agony,  who  was  sent  to  strengthen 
our  Lord  in  Gethsemane,  intercedes  for  the  shortening 
of  this  fresh  penitent's  suffering.  Then  we  learn  how 
the  eager  spirit  has  dashed  from  the  hold  of  its  guardian 
angel — • 


NEWMAN'S  CHIEF  POEM.  249 

"  And,  with  intemperate  energy  of  love, 
Flies  to  the  dear  feet  of  Emmanuel ; 
But  ere  it  reach  them,  the  keen  sanctity, 
Which,  with  its  effluence,  like  a  glory  clothes 
And  circles  round  the  Crucified,  has  seized, 
And  scorched,  and  shrivelled  it ;  and  now  it  lies 
Passive  and  still  before  the  awful  Throne." 

The  dream  virtually  ends  with  this  passionate 
expression  of  heart-rending  anguish  and  heart-healing 
hope — 

"  Take  me  away,  and  in  the  lowest  deep 

There  let  me  be. 
And  there  in  hope  the  lone  night-watches  keep, 

Told  out  for  me. 
There,  motionless  and  happy  in  my  pain, 

Lone,  not  forlorn, — 
There  will  I  sing  my  sad  perpetual  strain 

Until  the  morn. 
There  will  I  sing  and  soothe  my  stricken  breast, 

Which  ne'er  can  cease 
To  throb  and  pine  and  languish,  till  possest    - 

Of  its  sole  Peace. 
There  will  I  sing  my  absent  Lord  and  Love : — 

Take  me  away, 
That  sooner  I  may  rise,  and  go  above. 
And  see  Him  in  the  truth  of  everlasting  day." 

The  Dream  of  Gerontius  seems  to  me  to  contain 
the  happiest  summary  we  could  have  of  the  ideal 
which  has  pervaded  and  constituted  the  significance  of 
the  remarkable  life  I  have  been  trying  to  review — a 
life  that  has  fed  itself  from  beginning  to  end  on  the 
substance  of  Divine  revelation,  and  that  has  measured 
the  whole  length  and  breadth  and  depth  of  human 
doubt  without  fascinat'on  and  without  dread — a  life 
at  once  both  severe  and  tender,  both  passionate  and 
self-controlled,  with  more  in  it  perhaps  of  an  ascetic 
love   of   suffering   than   of    actual   suffering,   more   of 


250  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

mortification  than  of  unhappiness,  more  of  sensibility 
and  sensitiveness  than  of  actual  anguish,  but  still  a 
lonely  and  severe  and  saintly  life.  No  life  known  to 
me  in  the  last  century  of  our  national  history  can  for 
a  moment  compare  with  it,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  of 
such  deep  matters,  in  unity  of  meaning  and  constancy 
of  purpose.  It  has  been  carved,  as  it  were,  out  of  one 
solid  block  of  spiritual  substance,  and  though  there 
may  be  weak  and  wavering  lines  here  and  there  in 
the  carving,  it  is  not  easy  to  detect  any  flaw  in  the 
material  upon  which  the  long  indefatigable  labour  has 
been  spent. 

As  I  am  correcting  the  last  proof-sheets,  the  news . 
reaches  me  that  the  long  and  gracious  life  of  which  I 
have  been  writing  has  suddenly  terminated.  Cardinal 
Newman  died  at  the  Edgbaston  Oratory  on  Monday,  11th 
August^  1890,  after  less  than  two  days*  illness,  from  in- 
flammation of  the  lungs,  and  was  buried  at  Rednal  by 
the  side  of  his  dear  friend  Father  Ambrose  St.  John, 
on  Tuesday  the  19th.  No  more  impressive  testimony 
could  have  been  afforded  to  the  power,  sincerity,  and 
simplicity  of  the  great  English  Cardinal's  life,  than  the 
almost  unanimous  outburst  of  admiration  and  reverence 
from  all  the  English  Churches  and  all  the  English  sects 
for  the  man  who  had  certainly  caused  the  defection  of 
a  larger  number  of  cultivated  Protestants  from  their 
Protestant  faith,  than  any  other  English  writer  or 
preacher  since  the  Reformation.  Such  a  phenomenon 
as  this  expression  of  heartfelt  English  sentiment  for 
a  good  Roman  Catholic  would  have  been  impossible 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago ;  and  that  it  is  possible  now 
is   due   certainly  to   the   direct   influence  of  Cardinal 


PUBLIC  FEELII^G  ON  NEWMAN'S  DEATH.      251 

Newman's  life  and  writings.  And  the  honour  and 
reverence  paid  to  him  are  justly  due.  In  a  century 
in  which  physical  discovery  and  material  well-being 
have  usurped  and  almost  absorbed  the  admiration  of 
mankind,  such  a  life  as  that  of  Cardinal  Newman 
stands  out  in  strange  and  almost  majestic,  though  singu- 
larly graceful  and  unpretending,  contrast  to  the  eager 
and  agitated  turmoil  of  confused  passions,  hesitating 
ideals,  tentative  virtues,  and  groping  philanthropies, 
amidst  which  it  has  been  lived. 


THE  END. 


Richard  Clay  8f  Sons,  Limited,  London  tfe  Bungay. 


^ 


14  DAY  USE 

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